Category archive: toys

November 20, 2009

Tell Your Army Of Adorable Mask-Wearing Pandas To Stand Down, IKEA!

I'll buy the little alien helmet mask. And the plush, Ikea-colored viking helmet. Oh, what's that? Someone's rifled through the bins like a bowl of M&M's in a Van Halen dressing room or a box of marshmallow-less Lucky Charms,...
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November 19, 2009

ЯIP: Gunther Kilsheimer, Creator Of Toys R Us Logo

No way, did you know Toys R Us started in Washington DC? It began as a baby furniture retailer in Adams Morgan [in fact, the original store is now a blues bar called Madam's Organ. All the Baby Boomers raised...
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November 17, 2009

Hey You! Go To Shrimp Shop This Saturday In Los Angeles

Andy from Stork Bites Man and Ryan from The South Willard are having a colabo joint for kids starting this weekend. It's called the Shrimp Shop. Here's just a taste of what to expect:Boro Pants Ceramic Mobiles Creative Playthings...
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The Fageol Walkee Tricycle On eBay, Tetanus Shot Not Included

Wow, this looks incredible. Vintage industrial kid gear. The Fageol Walkee Tricycle takes its name from its inventor, Christopher Walkee. Haha, no. William B. Fageol and his brother Frank built the first bus. Their company, the Fageol Motor Company,...
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November 15, 2009

Take Me To Your Little Brother's Homemade Spaceship On Etsy

Ah, what are older brothers for? For selling the insane flying saucer playhouse your dad or whoever spent 8 months straight building for you on Etsy for ten grand, that's what. The one with the removable dome, the reclining...
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November 12, 2009

Ceci N'est Pas Un Caketopper. Custom Wood Doll Family

You know that NY Times article about custom wedding cake topper artists? Me either, but DT reader Eric did, and that's how he found out that Fancie Fannies also makes non-cake topper dolls, with kid-safe non-toxic paint. So he...
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November 10, 2009

OG Ply At Design Council

You know how, though he made an entire nursery for his own kids in his listed-and-open-to-the-public house, and how he did a bunch of toys for them, too, this is the only picture of Erno Goldfinger's modernist toys that ever...
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November 7, 2009

T Is For The Tiniest Shoppers

Wow, who at the NY Times T Magazine offices is having a baby? Because almost the entire Winter Design & Living issue is devoted to kid- and family-related design. Some highlights: Fred Bernstein's got a piece about how it's alright...
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November 6, 2009

Struts RIP, Or They Shot Whorses, Didn't They?

It started this summer, and so it has nothing to do with having kindergarten friends who take riding lessons. But otherwise, we are unable to account for the intensity of the kid's current horse-and-unicorn fixation. The one bright spot...
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November 4, 2009

Every Lego Family Speaks Lego In Its Own Way

So awesome. At The Morning News, Giles Turnbull has gathered several families' names for various Lego parts into one fascinating chart. Fascinating, yet useless, of course, since your own lingo is probably different:"Dad, I'm building a roof for the medical...
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November 3, 2009

Don't Cry For Wii, Australia

The Baby and Me video game for the Nintendo Wii is only launching in Australia, but who cares? You can make your own right at home. Here's the concept for the Australian version: Your baby reacts by giggling, gurgling...
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October 31, 2009

Vintage BRIO Rox: Molded Ply Ox

You know what might turn BRIO's fortunes around? Bringing back this molded plywood rocking ox with the red horns and foot rests and the blue felt seat that they introduced in 1967. Seriously, stack those things like Pringles and...
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BRIO? Indies? Toy Casualties Mount In CPSIA Trainwreck

It's been a while since the CPSIA has been in the news, or at least since anyone's sent me anything about it. The CPSC's new lead and phthalates restrictions and testing requirements for childrens' products kicked in earlier this year,...
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October 30, 2009

Japanese Rainbow Elmo's Super, Thanks For Asking!

Sanrio introduced these rainbow Elmo cell phone straps last year in Japan, as if the only problem with Elmo is that he's red. Elmo Dreams in Rainbow Colors cell phone straps [muppet wiki via Mr Brian Design]...
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October 29, 2009

Have You Seen Me? Vintage Mystery See-Saw At Grain Edit

There's probably a long German word for the kind of suffering that comes from not knowing where a cool vintage toy ad came from. And another one for the annoyance of scanning something and forgetting to make any reference...
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Vintage Playground Indy 500 Simulator

It looks kind of unwieldy, but this sweet piece of OG playground equipment is only 4' long and 2' high, small enough for toddlers--and small enough to ship via Greyhound. Even better--for me, anyway, I'm sure it means jack...
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October 27, 2009

Talmudic Toy Teasers

Here I was, reading about all these awesome Torah and Talmud Toys and wondering where I can get some--Toy Eglah Arufah Everything you need to act out the matter of the Eglah Arufah (literally, the decapitated calf). Toy Eglah Arufah...
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October 23, 2009

Busty Meccano Nanny & Pram By Andreas Konkoly

This won't be news to the readers of Pram Watch, the official blog of the Pram Museum, but to the few stragglers and delinquents among us, I say take note: "All nannies have a motherly bosom, and if you...
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October 19, 2009

Yes, Please, Thanks: Lego Kitchen By Simon Pillard & Philippe Rosetti

Damn, but I love/hate the Internet. How a simple idea, beautifully executed, can race around the world in serendipitous hops and jumps, shedding facts and context along the way. I don't know who Philippe Simon and Pillard Rosetti or...
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October 15, 2009

What Is A Puppenhaus, Alek?

That one SoCal roadtrip when I tried out for Jeopardy!, I got dinged in the final round. And yet nearly twenty years later, here I am, filing the most random bits of information away in my head for no...
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October 13, 2009

From The Mixed Up Archives Of Mrs British D. Sign Council: Play Rocker Prototype By John Millns

No sooner is one vintage kids design mystery solved than another takes its place. The British Design Council has published its slide collection online, including this rather awesome-looking "child's rocking play fixture," which uses the same special, NASA-designed bend-into-shape...
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Holy Smokes, It's The Tyng Toy!

The Tyng Toy was created by the brilliant young architect Anne Tyng in the late 1940's. It's probably the least well known of toy from the Golden Age of postwar modernist kid's design, an era which also saw toys...
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Random 1940s See-Saw Still Around, Mistaken For Antique

New Jersey auction house Rago Arts has a $1,000-2,000 estimate on this c. 1940s homemade ply & pine see-saw they're selling in a couple of weeks. Even if it does convert to "a stepping toy," when you flip it...
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October 8, 2009

Inflatable Solar System Just Like The White House

So for the last few months, the wife has been working on a big astronomy event at the White House, which just went down tonight. [High five, baby, you pulled it off!] She had 150 middle school kids, a...
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October 6, 2009

My Grandfather's Clock, The Eerie Song On My Kid's Version Of My Fisher-Price Clock

Naturally, I had no idea as a kid, but as soon as one of those Fisher-Price Teaching Clocks crossed my grown-up path this weekend, I started wondering what that song was. I mean, if it's going to be my ringtone,...
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October 5, 2009

Awesome In Theory: Fisher-Price Classic Toys

The Fisher-Price Teaching Clock I had as a kid is long gone, but the kid honed right in on Joel's yesterday at the flea market. She bought it for ten bucks. [I know, but I wasn't planning to teach...
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October 4, 2009

Like-A-Segway: Gyrowheel By Gyrobike

The old way to teach a kid to ride a bike was training wheels, of course, and the new OG way was on a pedal-less walking bike like a Like-A-Bike or one of its many knockoff/competitors. Now there's a...
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DT Found It: 'Sculptures For Children,' By Frances Weiss

Last fall, I'd wondered aloud who the unidentified artist was in Life Magazine's 1951-52 photos of some surreal sculptural playground equipment. All I could figure out was that some of the Jan. 1952 pictures were taken at Tibor de...
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October 1, 2009

Dutch Plywood Awesomeness By Gerrit Van Bakel

Whether it was the name of his collection or it's just Dutch for "plywood furniture," Gerrit van Bakel's "meubel multiplex" phase lasted from 1966 until the around 1981. During that time, the artist cranked out nearly 80 different rounded-edge...
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September 28, 2009

Damn, But I Hate You, Happy Meals

It's been a couple of years since some random punk and his dad at the McTable next to us told the kid that there are supposed to be toys in a Happy Meal. [As payback, I told him about the...
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September 18, 2009

From Ford's Dept Of Awesome/Horrible Ideas

After bugging my dad for months asking why we couldn't get a Citroen Karin, I learned not pay too much mind to concept cars. So the downright goofiness in the Ford Transit Connect Family One Concept of storage bins...
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September 10, 2009

And A Little Woodworkblogging On The Side

Swedish illustrator Anders Nyberg keeps a blog for all his wacky side projects. Come for the fantastical wooden toys, stay for the giant Lego "thing" Nyberg and his daughter made one Sunday afternoon using all their Lego pieces. Anders Nyberg...
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September 8, 2009

Thank You, Creston's Mom!

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } , originally uploaded by creston funk. DT reader Creston Funk's parents rather awesomely saved his...
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The Triumph Of The Crayolatariat

On the Fourth of July, we took the kids to The Crayola Factory: A Hands-on Discovery Center in downtown Easton, Pennsylvania. Though it's impossible to say such crafty entertainment could not be found without three hours in the car, the...
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September 3, 2009

This Week In Doll-Sized Real Estate Marketing

This Creative Playthings, slot-together, 2-story dollhouse is a later model, being sold unfurnished, and it's in good-but-played-with condition, so no museum piece. Still, I'm surprised it hasn't gotten any bids yet; back in the day, $99 might have been...
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September 2, 2009

Old Timey Pedal Cars At Bonhams Run The Awesome Gamut

There are three standout pedal cars in Bonham's upcoming auto memorabilia and classic vehicle auction Sept 12. They are presented here in decreasing order of estimated price... Lot 293, a bare metal restoration of an Austin J40 pedal car, complete...
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September 1, 2009

Mad World: If Kids Designed Their Own Xmas Toys

Seeing this old Al Jaffe spread from Mad Magazine was an "epiphanic" window into the design process for either Wary or Meyers, I'm not sure which. Also, it was one of the first things she or he picked out...
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August 31, 2009

Gold-Plated Creative Playthings Dollhouse Bathroom

Now I love Dino like a brother--a brother who gave me a very fair price on a beautiful, old, Elephant Gray Eames RAR shell, and who added a truly excellent reproduction Eiffel Tower base--and who attached it for free,...
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August 28, 2009

Hyperchouette! Willow & Juniper Baby Rattle From Provence

During the summer lull, Kiosk has posted a little mini-market of finds from Provence, including this awesome, handwoven baby rattle they found at the Saturday market in Apt. It's by a potato basketweaver from Cadenet--which happens to be just...
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August 27, 2009

Playgrounder Comes Out To Play

Before the kid was born, and I had a hard time finding any baby gear I could stand to live with, I thought I'd keep a list, so the next guy Googling around for an industrial-style changing table could use...
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August 24, 2009

Unplayed With, Ungnawed On: Awesome Creative Playthings Steamroller

It doesn't get any better than this, folks. If by "it" you're referring to vintage, 70s-era Creative Playthings wooden steamrollers, gift-ready and new in the original box. Whether it's worth at least $45 for your kid to have the...
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August 19, 2009

Larger-Than-Average Mickey Mouse Merchandise

1st Dibs: Come for the odd 1950's Mickey Mouse see-saw salvaged from a Miami Beach drive-in theater [$2,500 at Pierre Anthony Galleries in West Palm Beach, via anonymous works] Stay for the even more distended Mickey dresser, a head-scratching,...
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August 15, 2009

Bears On Melting Ice By Masahiro Minami

Japanese designer Masahiro Minami has come up with a fun, playful way to teach your kid how the SUVs are killing all the polar bears. Just like the Industrial Revolution killed off all those ice floe-hopping brown bears. Have...
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Kay Bojesen, Resistance Fighter?

From the Kay Bojesen Samling exhibition at the Rudersdal Museums comes this fascinating bit of context about the creation of one of Bojesen's signature toys, the Royal Danish guard:At its birth in 1942, in the midst of occupation darkness,...
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August 13, 2009

My Left Foot [Powered Hop-along Hobby Horse]

For want of a www., a day was lost. It took me until now to realize I was missing the www. on the URL for my blog server. Stay tuned for pictures of the Audi grille that was destroyed...
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August 10, 2009

Lovely Parting Gift: Gerrit Rietveld Dollhouse

I thought I'd tracked down every last kid-related design Gerrit Rietveld ever made, but it turns out I'd only covered the furniture, not the dollhouses [!]. Gerrit Rietveld presented the plans for this dollhouse to the Jesse family, repeat...
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August 9, 2009

Yes We Cane! Rattan Kids Furniture By Kay Bojesen [?!]

Is there anything that Kay Bojesen didn't make? In 1949, he created an export collection of rattan [spanskrør] kids and doll furniture for R. Wengler, basketmakers to HKH Frederic IX, King of Denmark. And the awesome pram above--sorry, doll-size...
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August 6, 2009

Thingamababy Totally OWNS The Baby Gloton Breastfeeding Doll Story, BTW

I know that it's suddenly flared onto the big gearblog and WTFblog radar, but AJ had that chup chupi chupiriffic Baby Glutton Spanish breastfeeding doll story down like three weeks ago. And he's got the hundred+ fervent lactivist comments...
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August 5, 2009

Men Shop At Mars, Parents Shop At Venus

Well, it's taken me a few years, but I think I finally have it all figured out: parenting, the difference between moms and dads, between quality and crap, between magazines and blogs, how to fluff an advertiser. And it's...
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Indian Bamboo For Kids By MP Ranjan

Prof. MP Ranjan sounds like the Eames and Enzo Mari of Indian design. Or at least Indian bamboo design. He's the head of the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, where...
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August 3, 2009

Creative Playthings Store By Studio Works

I'm trying to remember how I found my way to architect Lester Walker's website, but I don't have any trouble remembering what stuck there: the sweet, futuristic retail store that Studio Works designed for Creative Playthings in 1969. Studio...
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July 31, 2009

DT Friday Freakout: No Toms, Dustins Or Leos Edition

Have we got a pile of overhyped science and alarming news stories to ruin your parenting weekend! "Does Breastfeeding Cause Autism?" This insane headline is the reason the Freakout was created. It is also practically a quote from the UCSF...
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July 21, 2009

Purple Mountains Of Farm Toys From Sea To Shining Sea

Leaving Philadelphia on the 5th of July, we decided we wanted to be anywhere but I-95, so we headed to DC via the farm country of Lancaster County. Of course, the only Amish Experience we could expect is that...
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July 20, 2009

Finally, Stitch Wars Is Here, And Not A Plush Jar-Jar Binks In Sight

Sheesh, teasers from Stitch Wars, the Star Wars-themed indie craft exhibit/sale at Bear and Bird of Lauderhill, FL have been dribbling out for so long, it felt like the release of Episode I. But it's finally out, and after...
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July 18, 2009

Creative Stranglings: CP Indoor Gym House [Of Strangulation] On eBay

Wow, you don't see these on eBay very often. Nowadays, the company known as Creative Playthings makes nothing but slides and playground sets. But back when Creative Playthings was Creative Playthings, this was about it. The Indoor Gym House...
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July 16, 2009

Pfeiffer Opens Kaiku's Kimono

kaiku: sweet molded ply wagons and toy strollers set to drop this Fall but how do they look? website only teases: "little modern movement" AND?? whoops, hip designer's portfolio shows the goods inadvertently [?] kaiku design: little modern movement...
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July 15, 2009

One Backwards R To Rule Them All

Wow, so last we heard from Toys R Us & Babies R Us, they were buying up F.A.O. Schwarz, or whatever's left of it--a soon-to-be-evicted, toy store-themed amusement park on Fifth Avenue, and parents' vague, vestigial fondness for Tom Hanks...
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July 14, 2009

Felix Gotze: Eine Kleine Schaukelmotorrad

I've been trying to link to this all day, ever since DT reader Rolf tipped me off about it, but the original site who posted German designer [whose facebook says Hong Kong?] Felix Gotze's Motorcycle Rocking Horse has been...
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July 12, 2009

Real-G: Life-size Gundam Lands In Tokyo

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } CIMG6990, originally uploaded by ryoki. That is mecha-mazing. To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Gundam,...
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July 10, 2009

Blackhawk Down At Toys R Us Right Now!

For purposes of blogging, I'll assume these are real ads, and not just linkbaiting comps. Creative Review says the stills from this ad campaign for Mattel's Matchbox collection come from Ogilvy & Mather's office in the happy happy, good...
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July 6, 2009

4 Million Aqua Leisure Baby Floats Recalled For Drowning Risk [!]

If you thought reaching a live customer service rep at Aqua Leisure was hard before... The CPSC just issued a recall for over 4 million baby floats made by Aqua Leisure between 2002 and 2008 and sold until June...
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Slides Rule: The 517 Awesomest OG Suberidai In Japan

Andrew posted a few pictures of vintage Japanese slides [suberidai] on his blog, and I realized it's been two years since I visited iharay's amazing online collection. He's up to 517 slides now, and not even half of them...
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You Gank My Battleship!

The trick with the Monday morning What's New? email blasts from the vintage design gurus at Virginia-based Three Potato Four is realizing that they actually put the items in their online shop Sunday night. Usually, that means the awesome...
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July 4, 2009

Build-A-Heroin-Filled-Bear

On Independence Day, let's take a moment to celebrate what makes America great: like a network of drug dealers in the Bronx moving their heroin around the tri-state area inside Build-A-Bears. And the free press who keep referring to...
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June 29, 2009

Dollpocalypse Now

The horror... the ridiculous horror... I've been trying to work out the script where this dopey gringa gone-native is Dennis Hopper, and the man living on this abandoned doll-covered chinampa is Kurtz, which would make the canals of the...
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Reference Library, Max Lamb, Enzo Mari At The Selby

The homebrewed messy modernist snake has eaten its tail, and it looks awesome. Andy Beach's April retail colabo in Milan with Apartamento Magazine has now gotten the The Selby treatment. Which means you can see the full-color, reissued awesomeness...
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June 26, 2009

Hello Gundam?

A Taiwanese fan made this for Gundam's 30th anniversary. Stay tuned for the launch of the matching Pink Base. Deco-Gundam [pinktentacle via c-monster]...
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June 23, 2009

Now About That History Of Soft Play

I just realized it's been two whole months since I learned that those giant foam wrestling mat-style playgrounds are called "soft play," and that the leading design and manufacturer for soft play areas, in malls, anyway, is a Denver-based...
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June 17, 2009

Just Do What The Muppets Say, And No One Gets Hurt

Yeah, sure I knew Jim Henson's Muppets predated Sesame Street and that most were created for commercials. In the abstract. There were even a few Muppet ads screening last summer at the Smithsonian's otherwise forgettable Jim Henson Legacy exhibition. But...
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Awesome Homebrew Coffee Bar/ Play Kitchen

Come for the chalkboard paint in rainbow colors, stay for the awesome little stainless steel play fridge. Craig was one of the earliest DT reader/contributors, and a big modernist design fan, as you can see from the incredible homemade...
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So You Wish You Had An Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Pedal Car?

DT reader Katy sends along a photo of a cute kid in a wienermobile from flickr megapoweruser mattlogelin's photostream. And the obvious question is, "Where can I get one?" Well, they turn up on craigslist and eBay. About 16,000...
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June 16, 2009

Ausgezeichnet! New Renate Müller Animals--By Renate Müller

Sure, you might see a sweet Renate Müller stuffed animal, made in the 70's from leather and jute--the East German cashmere!--for sale here and there. Andy Spade's new store has/had a whole pile of them. But here's a caption...
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Those Pasties Look Like Choke Hazards Anyway

Miss Coco, this plush burlesque hoochie mama by etsy maker Jellibat, has already been sold. [jellibat's much tamer etsy store today, via tryhandmade]...
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Hola, Puerta De Los Alphabet Blocks Grandes!

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Reconstruyendonos II, 2009 by Belkis Ramirez , originally uploaded by C-Monster. Most artists just show...
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June 15, 2009

More Than Model Trains: Mid-Century Modern Kibri Dollhouse

Well here's one hint that German model maker Kibri had a serious modernist thing going on in the early 1960's: check out the swingin' Kibri doll house at Virtuelles Puppenhausmuseum. The doll house, model 158/9, was modular and extendable,...
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June 11, 2009

Mass Modern Auction @ W20: Thinking Of The Children

Part of me wants to shout out about all the interesting-looking kid stuff in Wright20's upcoming Mass Modern auction June 27, and part of me wants to shut my piehole, because there are lots of lots being sold no reserve,...
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'Dov Working On Various Construction Projects'

For those who have a hard time imagining American Apparel CEO Dov Charney making anything other than a complete, skanky, sexual harassing ass out of himself, this slideshow of all the crafty toys and furniture he made as a...
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June 8, 2009

One Was Johnny

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Johnny Carson & Nauga, originally uploaded by grickily. The other was Nauga, and the third,...
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June 7, 2009

Creative Playthings Miracle: "Immaculate" Play Kitchen

Just a sec, I need to update my list.... DT's Words I'll Never Hear Describing Vintage Creative Playthings Play Kitchens list Pristine Mint Immaculate Never Been Played With Free Shipping OK, I'm back. And what better to do on...
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June 5, 2009

Ikea Slide, Now In Convenient Take-Home Size

One of our Ikeas somewhere had a slide at the entrance to the kids section, which was mildly awesome. But either I forgot which Ikea it was, or they tore it out, because it's gone now, which mildly sucks....
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June 4, 2009

The Family That Flays Together Stays Together: Freaky One-Eyed Kid Car By Elmer Presslee

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Now how is it that a kid in a music video full of rubber, gore-faced...
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June 2, 2009

Wood Paneling Dollhouse

One of the kid's early trademark phrases, which she learned by listening to me call my wife to tell her where we were in our NYC-DC commute, was "Somewhere in New Jersey." Near as I can tell, that's also...
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June 1, 2009

Crazy Racers That Go-Go-Go! [Out Of Print]

With the end of preschool approaching, I've been stockpiling some craft and toy and art projects to keep the kid busy. At the flea market today, we scored a couple of pristine, c. 1960 activity books from Whitman Publishing of...
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May 31, 2009

They Don't Make Rickshaw Tricycles Like They Used To

Yes, venerable playground fixture Angeles Tricycles still makes a tricycle rickshaw, the Silverrider. But a few decades of lawyering and design tinkering has taken the edge off. And added some paint to the raw, simple beauty of the galvanized...
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May 28, 2009

F.A.O. R Us

Toys R Us is owned by Bain Capital and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts. TRU has announced it is acquiring F.A.O. Schwarz, a company whose primary assets consist of two retail leases [NYC, which expires in 2012 and is being...
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Malaise Era Creative Playthings Dump & Derrick Truck - NIB

The compleatist, collector, or gnawed-wooden-toy-ophobe will be bidding against each other for this New In Box Creative Playthings Dump & Derrick Truck that just appeared on eBay. Me, I'll sit this one out. Even though the ability to switch...
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Mecha Bojesen Mega Auction

Though Kay Bojesen has been reduced to expensive teak monkeys today, back in the day, he was a veritable one-Dane, wooden Playmobil, replicating even the most random corners of the modern world in his signature, modernist toy style. At...
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May 20, 2009

The 8-lb Vespa-Riding Gorilla In The Room

From Hypebeast, the hipster press release transcription service beloved by corporate brand managers the world over, comes an announcement about a hundred scooters dropping:Aside from the 100th Anniversary Apparel Collection, quintessential brand Fred Perry collaborates with legendary Italian company Piaggio...
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May 12, 2009

Neutraface Blocks: Teaching The ABC's Of Typefaces Since 2009

So awesome. Before House Industries introduced their Alexander Girard-inspired blocks a couple of years ago, the mid-century modernist alphabet block market was in a rut. Actually, it didn't exist, but that's not important now. What's important is that House...
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May 8, 2009

What's Wrong With This Piet Hein Eek Picture?

If you ignore my sloppychoppy highlighting, nothing. But HOLY CRAP, DWELL MAGAZINE! If you're gonna have a fine interview with Piet Hein Eek, and then you add a 27 [!] slide slideshow, DON'T have the caption on the 27th...
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Faces Tape By Our Children's Gorilla

The Swedish kid's design company Our Children's Gorilla has advertised on Daddy Types before, but they come up with such awesome stuff, sometimes I think I would pay them to write about it. Seriously, I think I'll PayPal them...
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May 6, 2009

Pininfarina Giulia Rocking Horse Object For Riva 1920

The names Pininfarina and Giulia go together like, well, like Alfa and Romeo. So I was a little concerned that would Pininfarina blithely attach the name of one of its founder's last and greatest creations to anything, much less...
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May 5, 2009

Molto Colani! The Limited Edition Luigi Colani Action [sic] Figure

Decked out as they are in remarkably detailed recreations of the butter yellow trenchcoats the Professor created for Swissair in 1990 and possessed of the maestro's intense, visionary gaze into the biomorphic future, the 1/6 scale collectible figures of...
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May 4, 2009

Fou, Fou, Completement Fou! Hermes Pour Les Petits

OK, the massive auction of vintage Hermes stuff coming up at Artcurial in Paris on the 20th better be because hedge funders are scrambling for liquidity in the face of the global depression. Because if 700+ lot sales of OG...
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May 1, 2009

Mille, Pedal Car By David Seabra

The finalists in the Prix Emile Hermes design competition were exhibited at Milan last week. If there had been a category for awesomest ride-on toy, I'm sure Portuguese architect David Seabra's Mille pedal car would have won. Also the...
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April 30, 2009

It's Baaaack! Knu Re-Reintroduces "Rocking Beauty," Gloria Caranica's Red Ball Rocking Horse

Or is that, "Knu re-reintroduces 'Red Ball Rocking Horse,' Gloria Caranica's Rocking Beauty"? I got this press release in my inbox the same time as some other folks, but I wanted to get some more info before posting about...
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Living On The Earth [While Mostly Naked, And With A Kid]

As soon as I saw the cover of Alicia Bay Laurel's Living on The Earth at the library sale, I knew I was buying it, and as soon as I opened it and found out the whole thing was...
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April 28, 2009

Just One Word: Plastic Crawligators. OK, Two Words

Dads of future boogie boarders of America take note: there's a Crawligator on eBay, and right now, it is only eleven bucks. $77. still not a record. UPDATE: The Crawligator bubble has not popped. It went for $405. Crawligator,...
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April 27, 2009

Birds On A Tree? How Can That Be?

The Creative Playthings junkies mourn today, at least all the ones who didn't win the auction yesterday for this pristine and rarely seen Birds-on-a-Tree puzzle from Creative Playthings. Fantastic, and in a palette that'd match the kitchen you grew...
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April 22, 2009

Milano Watch 2009: Color Me Villa?

On the bright side, it's nice to see that Magis didn't invent a method for turning petro-plastic into cardboard to make Javier Mariscal's Villa Julia playhouse. On the, uh, not so bright side, the Villa Julia may be the...
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Milano Watch 2009: Magis, Giant Plastic Dodo Not Yet Extinct

A giant plastic rocking Dodo debuted by a giant plastic manufacturer at a giant furniture and design fair in the middle of a depression while the planet's climate is deteriorating? Magis is ironic like a #$%ing Hummer turning donuts...
[read the full post...]

Who Makes Those Airbrushed Wrestling Mat Playgrounds?

Did you know that those Habitrail-like indoor playgrounds made out of plastic tubes and padded pipe were invented in 1982 by Jack Pentes? And that his soft modular play [SMP] solutions alleviated baby boomers' fears of letting their kids...
[read the full post...]

April 21, 2009

Recycled? And How: Color Me House Cardboard House Wins Dr. Toy Award, Costco Deal

I've been covering the children's cardboard industry long enough to know that recycling is the norm. What I don't do, though, is go around trading on my purported reputation as a toy expert by anointing straightup knockoffs with meaningless...
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April 18, 2009

Score One For The Little Bunny: Bankruptcy Court Orders Oilily To Remove & Destroy Rosa Pomar Knockoff Bunnies

Wow. If I'm reading my Google Translator right, Rosa Pomar has won. Fearing that publicity and criticism of Oilily's knocking off of Pomar's stuffed bunnies could derail the sale of the bankrupt company, the Dutch court trustee appointed to oversee...
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April 8, 2009

Just Give'em A Cardboard Box To Play With

So a publicist sent me [1] a Nintendo DSi the other day, which I still haven't opened yet. Though I'm a video game culture guy, I'm not really a video game guy. And I try to be upfront with...
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April 6, 2009

Oh Give Me This Home, Where Las Vaquitas Roam

Because I will not be spending $19.5 million to buy it. New York Magazine cuts a line of pure real estate China White in their feature on this 7,000-8,000 square foot duplex loft atop a West Village garage. But...
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The Toys Our Grandfathers Built Are Now Antiques

On the way to get a haircut this weekend [in DC, Georgetown], I was stopped by this awesome, homemade pedal plane in the window of Metro Interiors, one of the few clean 20th century vintage shops I've found in...
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April 2, 2009

Not April Fool's, But Also Decades Late: The Death Star Beach Ball

Lucas, I oughta... just ship the damn thing already. The R2D2 Inflatable Drink Holder can wait. Shiny kid from A.I. not included: Death Star Beach Ball available at Target [starwars.com via boingboing]...
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March 31, 2009

It's A Miracle! Giganta And Rocket Slides Are From The Same Company

It's obvious now, but until a couple of minutes ago, I had no idea Giganta the scary/awesome playground robot and the biggest, awesomest rocket-shaped playground structures were both made by the same company, Miracle Equipment Company of Grinnell, Iowa....
[read the full post...]

March 30, 2009

BRIO On Swedish eBay: They Don't Make'em Like They Used To

And for a moment it looked like they may not make them at all anymore. But thanks to the excellent sleuthing of previous DT advertiser Christopher Robin of Our Children's Gorilla, we can enjoy a few sweet vintage BRIO...
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March 25, 2009

Richard Dattner's Habitot, The Ur-PlayCubes

Wow, awesome. While poking around a bit more on urban planner/architect/playground designer Richard Dattner's PlayCubes concept--which, according to the 2000 monograph of Dattner's work, seems to be doing just fine, thanks--I found this: Habitots. And this is what we...
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PlayCubes: The Richard Dattner MidCap That Didn't Stick

Along with Paul Friedberg, architect Richard Dattner has been one of the most influential forces in modern playground design in the US. They both championed the adventure playground concept in the 1960's, which called for the transformation of underused...
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March 23, 2009

Picture Yourself On A Plane. On An Island. A Bunny With Flower-scope Eyes

So while I'm waiting to see any response from Oilily about Rosa Pomar's flower-eyed bunny dolls and what looks like a cut-n-dry case of knockoffery, some new developments have come to light about the history of one design element...
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March 22, 2009

Oilily, AKA The Dutch Portuguese Indies Plundering Company

Those Dutch, always with the greedy, unilateral attacks on the Portuguese Indies. In the 17th Century, it was the Dutch East Indies Company seeking to wrest control of lucrative spice trading routes in Asia that were controlled by the Portuguese...
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March 21, 2009

Happy 50th "Birthday" To All The Little People Out There

What could warm a parent's heart more than sharing a treasured memory of a favorite toy with his own child? Today, March 21st, is the "officially marked" 50th birthday of Fisher-Price's Little People. That's right, the awesome little figurines...
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March 20, 2009

Brio 26 Tile Pick-Up Game

I confess I can't remember at the moment, but I love whoever gave us this Brio Pick-a-Pair game like family. And it's beautifully made, with endearing designs that were no doubt applied to this high-quality hardwood by happy, skilled,...
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March 18, 2009

Welcome To The Hotel Dora: You Can Grow Out Of It Any Time You Want, But You Can Never Leave

I knew it was a bad week, finger-on-the-pulse-wise when I learned about Nickelodeon and Mattel's plans to launch Tween Dora on NPR's weekend quiz show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me." But I needn't have worried. That was just the...
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March 17, 2009

Ahh, The McMemories

As any serious doll collector knows, Yolanda Bello's doll designs for Ashton Drake, in her own eloquent words, "redefined doll collecting as the world knew it" when her first doll, Jason, a romping tot in a blue cloud suit designed...
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March 13, 2009

Caonimama? Pushmi-Pullyu The Next Symbol Of Chinese Internet Freedom

When I bought this sweet, fuzzy vintage Pushmi-Pullyu doll on eBay a couple of years ago, I thought it'd be fun for the kid. Only when it arrived did I see how hilariously unplayable it was for a toddler,...
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March 11, 2009

Plush Your Mother: Grass Mud Horse Dolls In China

Long Duck Dong, freedom fighter! The NY Times has a report about a fascinating protest movement that's sweeping the Chinese internet. In response to a massive political crackdown by government censors, ostensibly targeting vulgarity and porn, millions of net...
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March 6, 2009

Barn Find? Creative Playthings Moon Buggy

My wife works for NASA, and yet I had no idea our country faced a dire shortage of wooden moon buggies until this old-timey Creative Playthings moon buggy turned up for sale on eBay. It's the first one I've...
[read the full post...]

February 26, 2009

The Skeeving Of Lot 1069: Little Kid Stuff From The Michael Jackson Auction

Apr 15 UPDATE: The NY Times reports that the auction, which Jackson had originally authorized, then recently opposed, has been canceled. Also, instead of "the large turnout" that had been expected, "only a few dozen fans and passers-by were...
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February 23, 2009

Can Your Mother In-Law Make A Crawligator This Awesome?

A couple of weeks ago, when we started huntin' Crawligators in the Internet swamps of eBay and craigslist, DT commenter John suggested this blog post, where a little kid in the Bay Area named Sibyl was cruising around on...
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February 19, 2009

Daddy Types Love Roller Bears

When you have a website called Daddy Types, you're pretty aware of how often you talk about how fun it is to play with bears. These little carved wood bears from Germany, which roll back onto their feet on...
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February 17, 2009

Brio Bork Bork Bork Bork! What's Swedish For "Bankruptcy"?

Actually, the word that matters most to the venerable Swedish wooden train maker right now is likviditeten. Liquidity. As in, cash. As in, after disappointing sales, extended operating losses, and extraordinary expenses, Brio is facing what its board of...
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Friendly Frontier: Climb Every DIY, Inflatable Slide-Equipped Mountain

Friendly Frontier is the second is the artists Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich's Dummy Landscape series. It's an inflatable mountain range, "of the kind so commonly used by nature to divide countries," which is equipped with inflatable evacuation slides....
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February 15, 2009

Mad Mod Ply Dollhouse Prototype On eBay

This sweet, birch ply modernist dollhouse just turned up on eBay, where it's described as "one of just a few modern dollhouse prototypes designed and built by an architect-cabinet maker team. Designs were based on modern houses by Le...
[read the full post...]

February 12, 2009

Brother, Can You Spare A Crawligator?

The Creative Playthings Crawligator is one of those awesome, fun-looking, no-brainer toys that looks like it should be on the market forever. Like a Hula Hoop or Rock'em Sock'em Robots. Unfortunately, the little baby belly skateboard didn't survive the...
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February 9, 2009

Ronin Playtown Fire Truck By Creative Playthings On eBay

In the mid-1960's, Julian Winston designed the Playtown series for Creative Playthings, which included playsets for an airfield, a marina, a garage, and a fire station. With no fire station to serve, this masterless wooden fire truck, sweet and...
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February 7, 2009

Dude Makes Indy Pedal Racer Out Of Pots & Pans

Suh-weet. Hoosier native and kitchen raider Joseph Inhat made a sweet, 1930's Indy-inspired pedal car for a 4-year-old he knows [kid? grandkid?] out of pots, pans, and a maraschino cherry lid. Pictures of the build are at Hemmings' blog....
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February 6, 2009

Hans Beck, Father Of Playmobil, 79

Hans Beck, who became the chief of development for the Brandstätter Group toy company after he created Playmobil in 1974, died last week at the age of 79. Playmobil's German inventor Hans Beck dies aged 79 [guardian.co.uk] image: detail...
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February 5, 2009

Everything Must Not Go! Court Spanks CPSC, Upholds CPSIA Phthalate Ban

Short story: If you make or sell plastic or vinyl children's products, you can forget whatever plans you made for the weekend. Slightly longer story: The Natural Resources Defense Council and Public Citizen sued the CPSC over exceptions the Commission...
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February 4, 2009

Girard In The House!

House Industries pioneered the Alexander Girard objet revival in 2006 with their awesome wood blocks set, which they adapted from the sun-covered matchbooks Girard designed for the Casa del Sol restaurant in NYC. That's the House approach: adapt some...
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February 2, 2009

Naef Bau Bau: Swiss Building Toys NOT For Tinkering

Who's ever even heard of this Naef Bau Bau birch building set designed in the 50's by Gert Muller? As far as I can tell, the thing's only been published in two tiny pictures in the Kurt Naef biography....
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February 1, 2009

November Was Nakaban Month At Chigo

Chigo is one of our absolute favorite baby stores in the world, which is too bad because it's in Tokyo, and we haven't been for a while. Which means we missed the veritable Nakabanpalooza they held last November. I...
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Yeah, Right. You're Not Gonna Fool Me With That "Naugahyde Comes From Naugas" Crap Again

You know how when you were like seven, your dad told you that the bar stools in the rec room were not vinyl, but a special kind of leather that only came from these mysterious creatures called Naugas? And...
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January 30, 2009

Creative Playthings And, Uh, Other Playthings

Andy found a 1970 New York magazine review of the Creative Playthings store on 53rd Street which, unfortunately, replaced their awesome original store in Rockefeller Center. Here's my favorite line: "I do wonder about the value--educational or play--of live fish...
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January 21, 2009

Tchotchkes We Can Believe In? Toy Obama Air Force One

Maybe the problem is that crunchy liberals have been out of power for several breeding cycles? But it's not like the neo-con's Torture Me Elmo was a big hit, either. Maybe making toys that are simultaneously propagandistic and fun...
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Elsie Marley And Her Patchwork Steam Shovel

It was always said that Elsie could craft in a day what a 100 other etsy.com sellers could craft in a week. I hope it's not too Henry B. Swap of me to point out there are enough buttons...
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January 20, 2009

Ferrari Bikes 70-80% Too Expensive

The catalogue copy for the Ferrari children's bicycles is maybe more revealing than intended about exactly who they're for:This licensed Ferrari bike is simply beautiful in every detail. The perfect first bike when your child has to have the...
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January 19, 2009

Betty Thomson's Multiplications Got Spanked By The Yoshimoto Cube

90% of dadblogging is just what shows up. Just a few hours after I stumbled across Multiplications, I stumbled across the Yoshitomo Cube. Here's the deal: In 1969, The Museum of Modern Art commissioned artists and designers to create some...
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Don't Let Your Child Choke On Those Plush Ovaries

As soon as Los Angeles plush artist Wendy Bryan found out that the plush ovaries and Fallopian tubes on her I Heart Guts plush uterus posed a choke hazard, she immediately announced a recall. Even though the plush uteri...
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January 14, 2009

Alright People. We Have A Serious Creative Playthings Situation In New Jersey

If you thought the recent eBay appearance of some unusual--and unusually well-preserved--Creative Playthings toys being sold from Hamilton Square, New Jersey--a town within easy commuting distance of CP's vintage headquarters in Princeton--was a fluke, think again. The same eBay seller...
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January 13, 2009

Two Down, Thirteen To Go! Unidentified Local Family Drives Extremely Identifiable Bugaboo

Does the sender of the first photo of a Little Marc Jacobs X Bugaboo in the wild still win a 'daddy type' t-shirt if she's also a Bugaboo publicist? Yes she does, but I'll keep the offer open for...
[read the full post...]

January 8, 2009

SkipHop Adds TrikeBike

Interesting. Skip*Hop keeps expanding its product line beyond the low-profile diaper and stroller bags which gave the company its start. And now they've picked up what I believe is their first distribution deal; they're now the US distributor for New...
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January 6, 2009

She's A Children's Product! Burn Her!

I want to fix the CPSIA, the CPSC's new lead testing law, and save all the various children's product industries from regulation-induced bankruptcy and collapse on February 10th as much as the next guy. But I would like to do...
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January 1, 2009

Playing For Kepes

So far, I haven't been able to get the LIFE Magazine photo archive on Google to return more than 200 images at a time. So who knows how many photos Ralph Morse actually took of the awesome nursery Juliet...
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December 31, 2008

I'm Gulliver, Dammit!

Uhh, wow. Just, wow. With only a few hours before the deadline, I have found The. Craziest. LIFE Magazine Archive Photo of 2008. It's by Ralph Morse, and it was a, uh, well, it's about the introduction of Troll...
[read the full post...]

Creative Playthings Playsack Turns Classic "Bag-On-Head" Punishment Into Hours Of Flame-Retardant Fun!

Hmm, look what else is in that New Jersey basement. An unopened Creative Playthings Playsack, which, as you could probably guess, is a giant paper bag that a kid is supposed to play in. The eBay description is intriguingly...
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December 30, 2008

What The Schnell? Has Any Kid Ever Even Ridden An Alurunner?

The Alurunner sled answers the burning question absolutely no one who hasn't just downed an entire bota bagful of schnapps is asking: What would you get if a German performance tuner like AMG, Brabus, or RUF started with, not...
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December 29, 2008

Porsche, VW & Ferrari Sleds Are Exactly What You Would Expect

Which is to say, the top-of-the-line Porsche sled is an over-engineered, high-performance, aluminum-and-steel category killer of almost obnoxious simplicity. The cheaper one is plastic, and it tries to make you to forget that it's basically a Volkswagen. Also, it...
[read the full post...]

December 27, 2008

Ladislav Sutnar, Vik Muniz. Vik Muniz, Ladislav Sutnar

That's how I like to see my favorite Ladislav Sutnar prototype blocks: in a giant photo in the New York Times, accompanying an excellent review of Vik Muniz's awesome "Rebus" exhibition at MoMA. Roberta Smith says "Rebus" is fantastic...
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December 23, 2008

DIY Bantha Plush: Finally, Something Good Comes From The Star Wars Holiday Special

Anyone who has ever seen the 1978 variety showsploitation travesty that was the Star Wars Holiday Special cannot pretend to have been betrayed by the treacly offenses of baby Annakin and Jar Jar Binks. We knew Lucas had it...
[read the full post...]

I Know Exactly What You Can Get Oakley For Christmas

And no, it's not sunglasses. It's an awesome, giant stuffed ball made from a muted-yet-whimsical selection of 100% recycled wools. Hopefully, your Oakley's parents aren't too hippieish about natural fiber stuffing, because anything but polyester turns this into Oakley's...
[read the full post...]

Sweet Modular Prefab Dream Finally Realiz--Wait, It's A Dollhouse

Until the real estate market exploded, modular prefabricated modernist houses that were intended to combine the quality finish and economies of off-site construction, but that ended up costing as much as, if not more than, straight-up custom design were...
[read the full post...]

December 22, 2008

The Smallest Plywood Dollhouse

Etsy seller Petit Flaneur makes this interesting-looking little doll house--and I mean little, it's only a foot high--out of printed, papered hardboard and filled with "birch micro-plywood" furniture. Including a sweet, micro-plywood crib that should give the CNC types...
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December 20, 2008

Not In Time For Christmas: OG Handcarved Pull Toy By Antonio Vitali

Don't not buy this incredible hand-carved wooden donkey pull toy from Antonio Vitali's early, Swiss National Crafts Store days before he started working with Creative Playthings, because the opening bid is a whopping $399. Don't buy it because the...
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Calvin Klein Dollhouse By Josh Prince-Ramus

Uh, wow. OK. Calvin Klein, which is now owned by Phillips-Van Heusen, commissioned Josh Prince-Ramus, the guy who bailed on Rem Koolhaas to start his own firm REX, to design a dollhouse for the Madison Avenue store's holiday display....
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December 17, 2008

First, Dump Out The Dry Cleaning Solvent: DIY Pedal Car From A 55-Gal Drum

I lost the pictures, but when we went to the Pioneer Day parade in Ivins, Utah last summer, there was, in the parking lot next to the inflatable slide that got so hot in the desert sun, kids would come...
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December 15, 2008

Awesome Molded Ply Slide Of Doom From Creative Playthings

They sure don't make'em like they used to. And even as the safety-loving half of me is relieved, the awesome, molded plywood simplicity-loving half of me is in mourning. Just take a gander at this vintage portable slide from...
[read the full post...]

December 13, 2008

Grand Magasin: It's Kiosk For Commies!

With the US government busy de facto nationalizing major swaths of our crumbling economy, this Christmas season is a good time to turn our attention to the glorious, proud, worker-owned co-op factories of Europe--and then go all capitalist on...
[read the full post...]

December 11, 2008

Crochet A Circle. Crochet A Circle Now. YGG OG Amigurumi

Wow. I wanna go to the crocheting party in etsy seller Crafty Is Cool's tummy, too. Sure, she's created plans and kits for making your own amigurumi versions of Yo Gabba Gabba! characters. Which is great. But if you...
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December 10, 2008

A Quick Study Of Albanian Lego Sub-Machine Guns

We're not hippie freaks about it, but we don't let the kid have toy guns, play with toy guns, or pretend that she's playing with a gun. When she started pointing sticks and Lego structures at us and looking...
[read the full post...]

December 8, 2008

In Soviet Union, The Catalog Orders You

Back up a minute, comrade. Can somebody explain how it is that we--the Americans--supposedly won the Cold War, and yet I'm the one who has to wrestl with a pile of catalogs as big as a bear cub and...
[read the full post...]

December 7, 2008

Washington Post Pre-Eulogizes Club Libby Lu

The Washington Post has taken a moment at its parenting blog On Parenting to note the impending demise of skanky mall makeover chain Club Libby Lu. The editors mourn the loss with deep sadness, and the comments are filling up...
[read the full post...]

December 5, 2008

Modernist Doll Housing Market Bubble Update: Villa Sibi, $10 On eBay

I'm going to operate on the assumption that some people, somewhere have actually been buying Sirch's Villa Sibi. One possible explanation for the the nearly 50% price increase for new Villa Sibis [from $600 in 2004 to $855 today]...
[read the full post...]

December 4, 2008

It's Hard Out There For A Bratz

You know, people bitch and moan about the out-of-control litigiousness of the American corporate landscape, and particularly intellectual property laws and the stranglehold rabid trial lawyers pursuing frivolous copyright infringement cases have on good old-fashioned creativity. But then you read...
[read the full post...]

My First Murakami Chibi Kinoko

Chibi Kinoko, aka Little Mushroom, is an adorable little character Takashi Murakami introduced on his line of exclusive Louis Vuitton bags and accessories. And there's a 9-inch plush version available, too, because as anyone who loaded up at Murakami's in-museum...
[read the full post...]

December 3, 2008

FOUND: Large, Slightly Mangy Toy Dog, Answers To The Name Of Bojesen

Are you on a sacred quest to find a Kay Bojesen pull toy dog woodworking project that's larger than a tuna can? Because it appears that an outfit called Find The Grail Auctions has posted one on eBay. But...
[read the full post...]

December 2, 2008

Blame Candy Land

Because the board games teach kids what their parents don't have time to say, Greg Costikyan has an in-depth analysis of Candy Land, the board game created by Eleanor Abbot and first published by Hasbro in 1949. Costikyan lifts the...
[read the full post...]

November 28, 2008

To Shop: Reference Library @ Kiosk, Nov. 28 - Dec. 7

If you shop at only one blogger-curated pop-up store this holiday season, make it Andy Beach's Reference Library Mini-Exhibition at Kiosk in SoHo. Despite his fame as a retail artist/design guru/dad/ex-DT guest blogger is probably best known for his...
[read the full post...]

Thanks To Jamie Hayon, The Chicken Shape Is No Longer Unexplored

From Lladro hacker Jamie Hayon's website: The chicken, a rather unexplored shape, found its place amongst my green dreams. I wanted to portray this common bird as a sensational object by amplifying its characteristics and dimensions, turning it into...
[read the full post...]

November 25, 2008

Ikea Store Ikeahack? Play Kitchen Made From Something Else

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Ikea play kitchen in the Elizabeth City, NJ store, originally uploaded by daddytypes. When I...
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November 24, 2008

The Mystery Of Life: Who Designed This "Modern Playground Equipment"?

The search results for "playground" at Life magazine's photo archive are dominated by one series of images: nearly 200 photos of surrealist bent steel playground equipment from 1951-2 created by an unidentified female sculptor. The stuff is awesome: creatures...
[read the full post...]

November 22, 2008

Quirky Canada Has Own Laws, Crazy, Calder-Inspired Sideways Circus

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } circus, originally uploaded by Rob Cruickshank. If it weren't in Canada, and thus even colder...
[read the full post...]

November 19, 2008

Ko Verzuu? Don't Mind If I Do

FWIW, I toggle back and forth between the just-the-facts headlines and the annoying, jokey ones. Guess which one this is? A couple of very interesting looking ADO toys designed by Ko Verzuu just popped up on eBay Austria: a...
[read the full post...]

November 18, 2008

I Wanna The Whole World In A Bag, Muji, 'N Ever'thinissinit

For the fourth Christmas in a row, Muji has expanded its "In A Bag" series, a megalomaniacal mission to distill entire swaths of the known universe into tiny, little wooden toys, and then trap and sell it in little...
[read the full post...]

Muji ABC & Kanji Stamp Sets

You know the old saying: there are no atheists in Muji Xmas Gift Departments. Once again, the minimalist, eco-friendly, no-frills retailer has come up with a giant mountain of stuff I want to buy. First up in the Mujimix: great...
[read the full post...]

November 15, 2008

Pups.It Italian Indie Plush Is Freakin' Awes... Sigh

Crazy creatures, quirky personalities and backstory, imaginary cartoon world, lumpy plush toys, tight jeans--holy smokes, they actually call themselves "The Kidult Lab." But here's the catch: It's Italian! Wake me up when someone pulls one of those Marvel vs....
[read the full post...]

November 13, 2008

I'd Like To Be Told. When It's Going To Suck: Busted Mister Rogers Talking Key Chain

A few months back, I felt like a heretic even asking the question, whether some slightly expanded, thoughtful licensed merchandise from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood might not be a nice alternative to parents facing down the Sesame Street juggernaut. Now...
[read the full post...]

November 7, 2008

PLAY Mobile! Sweet Rocking Cycle At Designblok 2008

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } PLAY!, originally uploaded by pavelm. Will the owner of the velo-tastic tubular rocking horse parked...
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November 6, 2008

Fresh From Prague: Baby Tron Chopper By Pesr Polak

Designboom reported from Designblok08 in Prague, where students in an industrial design class at the AAAD exhibited their class project: a series of ride-on toys for kids ages 1-4. I can't quite make out how Pesr Polak's super-slick actually...
[read the full post...]

For Sale: Creative Playthings Carriage, One Owner

Jenn from Minor Details spotted this sweet 1960's Creative Playthings plywood wagon/carriage on Craigslist. It's being sold out of Huntington, Long Island by the original owner, who is a big girl now, and can do things like research the...
[read the full post...]

November 3, 2008

Mumbleboy Papier Mache Awesomeness

The artist Kinya Hanada, who works as Mumbleboy, was into trippy indie plush before trippy indie plush was cool. Which may or may not mean that papier mache is the next plush; for all its clean, simple, aesthetic pleasure,...
[read the full post...]

October 30, 2008

Not Luigi Colani?? Another Non-German Engineering Scandal

Where's Brooke Shields when German engineering and design need her? First, we were forced to contemplate the reality that the "German engineered" VW Routan minivan is, in fact, a reskinned Chrysler Town & Country. And now, it turns out...
[read the full post...]

Eine Kleine Matchbox Zoo

This awesome vintage toy zoo from Germany fits into eight beautifully designed matchboxes. The pieces are so small, you have to wonder if they might actually not even be a choke hazard; just wash'em down with an extra bottle....
[read the full post...]

October 29, 2008

Merry F-in' Christmas, Pauly! Cervini's Custom Lil C500

Hell yeah, you're a guido, and f-in' proud of it, bitch. An' your kid's gonna grow up just like his old man, summers on the Shore and what not, you gotta problem withat, go back to the f-in' city....
[read the full post...]

October 28, 2008

Sublime Muppet X Station Wagon Mashup In Germany

In order to issue someone a speed camera ticket in Germany, it's necessary to have an identifiable photo of the driver, not just the car's license plate. Which, because of the sensitive camera calibrations, means all you need to...
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I'll Take Ridiculous Radio Flyer Concept Studies For $1,000, Alek

This over-contoured rethinking of the traditional red wagon was created by a design intern over the summer when the economy seemed slightly healthy, and it features a luxe interior with basically no alternative play patterns beyond getting pulled through the...
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October 27, 2008

Lynskey Performance Titanium Tricycles Now Available In Cycling Paradise

The stock market's a mess. The banking system's in disarray. The real estate market is a disaster. And now even Daddy Types' comments system has tanked. Fortunately, the production of customized titanium performance tricycles continues unperturbed. And not just...
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Partisan Hack, Or Thou Shalt Not Commit Kidultery

You know, when I started this post last week, it was going to be a self-righteous sermon against the evils of kidultery and how, when nominal adults get all fixated on designing toys for their own amusement and not...
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October 26, 2008

Mini Mies: Dad Builds A Farnsworth Dollhouse

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } exterior 1, originally uploaded by j&mgorman. Josh's' son Camden is almost two and getting into...
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October 25, 2008

Whatcha Got There, Kind+Jugend Dude? Is That The Hoppop Motta Walkbike?

Why, yes, yes it is. Hoppop is a Belgian outfit founded by baby footprint art mogul Christophe Verlinden, which came to the Kind+Jugend expo last year with the Hoppop Original, a hardcase diaper bag that converts into a booster...
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October 24, 2008

Once Thought Extinct, Stokke Hippo Spotted In The Wild

Well, the wilds of Sweden, anyway. I've seen exactly one of these awesome Stokke Hippo rocking toys before, in a baby store in Reykjavik, Iceland. I'm sure that one's since been chopped up for firewood, but artist/blogger Elisabeth came...
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October 23, 2008

Carbon Dating On A Pig: Bronze Age Toy Found Near Stonehenge

Archaeologists announced the discovery in an infant's grave near Stonehenge of a carved stone pig. They belief that the 2.5-inch figurine, which dates back more than 2,000 years, is either a toy or a memorial/funerary object for the baby's...
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Rad Mad Scientist Blocks, Lasercut For You By Xylocopa

Awesome. Just. Awesome. These incredible maple blocks, laser-engraved with line drawings from the hilarious world of mad scientists, showed up at Make Magazine's latest Maker Faire in Austin. They're by the laser-cutting artists at Xylocopa, a husband & wife...
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October 20, 2008

Anchor Stone Blocks Exist, Are Made Of Stone

I've got to clear these damn browser tabs. Anchor Stone Blocks were created in Germany in the late 19th century. They're red, yellow, and blue cast stone, designed to mimic the brick, limestone, and slate, respectively, of traditional European...
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Creative Playthings Family Scandal! Rocking Beauty Had Sister Named Rocking Ugly

As everyone hopefully knows now, the iconic Creative Playthings design, the red ball-equipped Hobby Horse, was not designed by Philip Johnson, and the Philip Johnson who didn't design it was the creative director of Creative Playthings, not the feisty,...
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Kaleidoscope-ic, Man: Phillips dePury Tries To Bogart My Toyage

Ceci n'est pas un toy. Ceci n'est pas un dollhouse. Ceci n'est pas a house at all. Because if it were any of that, would it be being auctioned off at Phillips dePury this Saturday? Bien sur que non....
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October 18, 2008

Mesdames Et Messieurs, Je Vous Presente Calder's Circus At The Whitney

For years, Alexander Calder's awesome theatre/performance art/toy/sculpture Circus has been in the lobby of the Whitney Museum, entertaining its way into the psyches of generations of city-dwelling kids. It's made of dozens of little articulated toy figures, which the...
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October 15, 2008

Group Hug! Nice Customer Service Stories From Wooden Toy Companies

There's a story on Consumerist about how awesome Melissa & Doug's response was when a mom called about a broken propeller on her daughter's new wooden plane. Though she only called about replacing the plane--and warning the company about the...
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October 13, 2008

Wow, Did The Kid Love Digging Up This Fake Dinosaur Skeleton

Somewhere in the past few years, a farmer in the city my in-laws retired to, St. George, Utah, found a motherlode of super-detailed dinosaur tracks and fossils, and they built an entire museum around them. Just like that. So...
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October 9, 2008

Wal-Mart: Don't Compete With Someone Who Buys Toys By The Shitload

The Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart has scattered a bunch of $10 toys in the aisles of its stores this Christmas season--which is apparently in full swing. Some other retail giants are doing the same thing. Wal-Mart doesn't say...
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October 4, 2008

I, For One, Welcome Our Spandex Lucha Robot Overlords

I mean, I know the robots are plotting to enslave the world by positioning themselves in close proximity to our human offspring. Where they wait, in silence, until the Robot Emperor gives the signal...then KABLOW! But when they have...
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October 1, 2008

Wood By Ten: Cute, Cheap And Into Production

OK, new theory: maybe no one in London remembers the Childsply and Childsform group design challenges and exhibitions because the entire London design world consists of an endless stream, year in and year out, of group design challenges?? ["Hello...
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September 30, 2008

Eighty Bucks For The Ur-Big Wheel?

The company that made the original Big Wheel, Louis Marx, sold out to his competitor in the early 1970's. That company, Empire Plastics, went bankrupt in 2001. Some other company reconstituted Empire and now makes the Original Big Wheel...
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September 29, 2008

Eames Elephants So Nice They Editioned Them Twice

Ahh, 2007. The good old days, when we thought that a thousand euros was a bit steep for a limited edition Eames molded plywood elephant, but hey, we'll manage. After all, we've been waiting since 1945 for the thing...
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Cubi-Q: German Play Furniture Is Awesome, Cubic

Looking at the traditional-to-slightly-boring children's furniture designs on the German wood furniture firm Zwergraum, I would never have imagined they'd come up with something as awesome as the Cubi-Q. With four boxes, two table-like pieces, cutouts, and optional wheels,...
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Tessell: I, For One, Welcome Our Korean Tessellation Play Mat Overlords

OK, so in the US, we're making foam playmats with alphabets on them. And in Denmark, they're making Bobles, ride-on, climb-on animals made from computer-cut foam. All well and good. Until you find out that in Korea, they're making foam...
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September 28, 2008

Took The Kid To Crafty Bastards, Er, "The Craft Fair"

So the kid and I went to Crafty Bastards after church today. We were overdressed and underinked. Still, we got to meet Spooky Daddy in person, which was awesome. He was working the puppetmaster thing pretty spectacularly, and it...
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September 26, 2008

Where All The Wooden Pacifiers At?

K2 is having a great time sucking on the wooden doorknobs on the kids' Via Toy Box doors. [Remember to glue, not just screw, those bad boys on, btw.] And one of the puzzles she loves [un]doing has these...
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September 23, 2008

DT Plush Toy Nerddown: Sluggy Freelance Bun-Bun Vs. Higgs Boson Particle?

Alright, Maybe I should be scouring flickr for photos of dads taking their infant children to the Yankees-Orioles game. And maybe I will. But for now, I'm too confounded by the nerdiness of these plush toys to do anything else....
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Il Ritorno!! Corraini Reissues Enzo Mari's Play Wall

In 1967 Danese debuted Enzo Mari's Il Posto dei Giochi, The Place of Games, otherwise known as "Wall." Kids could use the ten-panel corrugated cardboard play structure printed and perforated with Mari's designs to create various kid-sized spaces. The...
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Animal Families By Abbatt Toys

Abbatt Toys were sort of the Creative Playthings of England. Paul & Marjorie Abbatt founded their toy company in the 1930's with a focus on education and design. Their friend, the British modernist architect Erno Goldfinger, designed their innovative...
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September 22, 2008

Kid O Toys Arrive, Are Awesome

You know, I was just wondering to myself the last few weeks, "Where are those Kid O toys I was promised would be hitting the market soon?" And here they are. Wow. Educational clarity and simplicity of design that...
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DTQ: Anyone Know This Wooden Dollhouse?

Maya from Covetable doesn't covet this wooden dollhouse, at least not anymore. She just got it from another parent who can't remember where it originally came from. Does anyone recognize it? There's apparently a partially worn off logo "with...
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September 19, 2008

Just Shoot Me Now: A Dad Walks Into A Target...

I needed a gallon of mixed paint, and we were running low on diapers, so after I dropped the kid off at pre-school, K2 and I did a combined Home Depot/Target run to the Virginia suburbs. Holy smokes, nothing knocks...
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September 18, 2008

Needs More Blobwall: Greg Lynn's Recycled Toy Furniture Somehow Wins Venice Biennale

Huh? CAD monkey/architect Greg Lynn's Recycled Toy Furniture won an award at the Venice Biennale [not the real Biennale, the architecture one, but still], despite the fact that the only "furniture" aspect is the tacked on tabletops; giant plastic...
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September 17, 2008

Say Hello To The Schaukelwagen's Little Friend

Kinderstoele this, Kinderspiele that. A few days of poking around the kinderweb has turned more stuff I thought I would've known by now, but there you go. For example, I totally missed "Zappel, Philipp! - Die Welt der Kindermöbel," an...
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September 16, 2008

You Say Football Net, I Say Soccer Net, CPSC Finally Says It's A Freakin' Deathtrap, Get Rid Of It

Almost 200,000 MacGregor and Mitre toy soccer goals of death have been sold in the US since 2002. But now the CPSC has issued a recall, following news that a 21-month-old boy died while trying to climb one. I should...
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September 6, 2008

This Is Neil Fraser's Brain On Blocks. Any Questions?

Neil Fraser had an MRI, then he laminated his various cross-sectional scans onto a stack of 1" wooden blocks. Now he can do nifty tricks like cut away 3D models of the inside of his head. Wooden Brain [neil.fraser.name...
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September 4, 2008

Little Riggin': UK Dad Makes A Mini Foden Just Like His

After 150 years of British lorrymaking, Foden ceased production in 2006. Which, coincidentally? is when a truck driving dad in Herefordshire named Paul started making a kid-sized replica of his own Foden rig. Now it's done, and it looks...
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September 2, 2008

But Of Course. Kozmo The Arizona Anti-Smoking Alien Doll

In 1994, Arizona voters approved Prop. 200, a cigarette tax which would fund anti-tobacco use educational programs. After a couple of years of ramp-up AzTEPP, the Arizona Tobacco Education and Prevention Program hit its fully funded stride in 1998....
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August 31, 2008

Buy It For The Name, Keep It For The Cute: Skummis Plush Creature

I don't know what a filur is in Swedish besides a house music band and a military drone plane designed by Saab. But I do know what Skummis are: justsocuteiwannaeatthemup! Whether it's a blobby plush creature or a set...
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August 28, 2008

Why Is The Ferrari Tipo 500 The Rolls Royce Of Pedal Cars?

OK, so there's De Parma, a slightly cheeky antiques dealer in London, who's selling this vintage Ferrari Tipo 500 F2 racer pedal car--dated to the 50's and sourced to Italy, but otherwise no manufacturer is mentioned--in very nice original-looking...
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August 27, 2008

Vintage DIY Scooter: They Don't Make Them Like They Used To

Instructions: Take one set of roller skate wheels, an old handlebar, a 2x4, some boards. Add a bent sheet of tin to give it that proper Ralph Kramden Drives This Bus snout, then paint it with whatever's left over...
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August 24, 2008

Got Too Many Euros? Kidstuff Roundup From German eBay Auction

You know how The Economist publishes the Big Mac Index, to show how over- or underpriced certain currencies are for the exact same thing? Well, the price estimates the Munich-based auction house Quittenbaum has placed on US vintage auction staples...
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August 23, 2008

Y, It's Bamboo! Bam Bam Baby Tricycle

Not only did Andrew Grigor's Bam Bam Baby Tricycle win the 2008 Launch Pad Source One packer's prize for emerging Australian designers a few weeks ago, the prototype's flatpack, anti-plastic, sustainably harvested bamboo ply, recycled aluminum, and off-the-shelf O-ring...
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Karl Lagerfeld x Steiff Bear Mashup Scarier'n A Roomful Of Dolls

I don't care how many Diet Coke butlers you send my way. Come September, don't let me find out you got one of the 2,500 ridiculous Karl Lagerfeld bears Steiff is selling at places like Colette and Neiman Marcus....
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August 21, 2008

Wait, What? Evel Knievel Was A Skanky Tool

Dammit, I wish I would've found this before I got caught up in my Evel Knievel nostalgic posting spree. Because really, nothing takes the gleam off a childhood hero like hearing him make casual homophobic rape jokes about his own...
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Evel Knievel Electric Toothbrush

Holy smokes, I just checked, and the kid has eight toothbrushes, nine if you count the ToothTunes Junior musical toothbrush a publicist recently sent. [1] It turns the kid's skull into a soundbox; she hears "Hakuna Matata" inside her head...
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How Many Evel Knievel Tricycles Do You Think Are Still Out There?

I'll take a flying leap--hehe, yes, pun totally intended--and say, uh, not that many. Maybe a hundred? A dozen? Only two mentions of a 1975 AMF Evel Knievel tricycle seem to have gotten themselves embedded in the auto-compiled text...
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August 20, 2008

Webkinz, I Need To See You In My Office.

Because it's getting out of control. I understand that the social networking and community aspects of virtual worlds based on real world plush toys are quite powerful draws, especially for the youngest, least marketing savvy consumers who are your targets....
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August 19, 2008

Uh-Oh, Rachel Whiteread Got All The Doll House Furniture, Too

Seems that at least a few of the hundreds of vintage dollhouses sculptor Rachel Whiteread has been hoarding over the last couple of decades had some furniture in them. And when she could no longer resist its miniature charms,...
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Kippenberger Greifbar: Martin Kippenberger's Dollhouse

I can't find any references to it online beyond the auction sites, but this 1990 sculpture by Martin Kippenberger, titled Kippenberger Greifbar, will be sold at Sotheby's in New York in a few weeks. It's from an edition of...
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August 16, 2008

Visionary Obama, Protector Of American Children, Threatens To Ban All Chinese-Made Toys

Finally, a leader who refuses to pander to the giant corporations and foreign demons who threaten the greatness of this Nation! On December 19th, at a campaign appearance in Concord, NH, Senator Barack Obama boldly answered a citizen's question--a question...
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August 14, 2008

Diaper Bag Full Yet? Skip*Hop Is Gettin' Into The Toy Business

Having successfully branched out beyond diaper bags into the baby-related countertop accessory and playroom floormat markets, Skip*Hop has launched a soft, fuzzy toy collection. There are 14 pieces, optimally sized for the floor, the babyhand, and the stroller bracket....
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August 13, 2008

Karmazing! Little India Kali Plush Doll By Leeanna Butcher

See? Not everyone riffing on Sanjay Patel's awesome little Little India Hindu deities is knocking them off. Plush artist Leeanna Butcher went to art school with Patel, and he recently asked her to create this plush incarnation of Kali,...
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August 12, 2008

OG 1964 Ford Galaxie Fire Chief Wagon On eBay

Besides the remarkable, unrestored condition and the sheer awesomeness of growing up with sirens and flashing lights on top of your family ride--you'd be the star of every school dropoff line and carpool, and the kid'd totally be a...
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My Little Pony Of The Apocalypse

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } My Little Zombie Pony, originally uploaded by dbx1. This is only the second artist-modded My...
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August 8, 2008

Win A Yo Gabba Gabba! Keycap In The DT WTF? Licensed Product Contest!

The Mall: The kids and I went to Hot Topic yesterday at the mall. [Actually, at the second mall; the first mall we went to on Wednesday didn't even have a Hot Topic. What the point of our country's...
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August 7, 2008

Some Assembly Required: The Porcupine Playdome

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Waiting for The Last Hex, originally uploaded by daddytypes. Alright, I've finally got my photos...
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August 6, 2008

Fisher Price: Help Me, Jazz Hands Elmo, You're My Only Hope

If John McCain really wants to protect America's Children, he doesn't need to ban all toys from China, just half of them: the $11 bn/year Yet Another Sorry Robotic Elmo market. I can't tell--and I don't want to know--whether...
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August 5, 2008

Kung Fu Pander: McCain Threatens To Ban All Chinese-Made Toys

Don't know how I missed this, from an April 2008 Bloomberg report of a John McCain townhall meeting in Youngstown, Ohio:"I have to tell you, if I were president of the United States, the next toy that came into this...
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Pick It Up Pick It Up Pick It Up Pick It Up Pick It Up Pick It Up

And so it starts. Yo Gabba Gabba! toys have been spotted at Target. Noisy ones, too. Also: Borat-style swimsuits for boys. Or so it would appear. Yo Gabba Gabba Toys at Target [nontoxicreviews]...
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August 1, 2008

Gangsta Babies Keeping It Very Real, Unfortunately

Mezco Toyz introduced Gangsta Babies, a set of four 10-inch vinyl baby dolls decked out like refugees from a 2004 ad agency trend board. They illustrate perfectly the risks of designing a product that parrots fleeting trends instead of...
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July 27, 2008

Whoops, Missed That Herman Miller Kite

Just checking in on the vintage goods at the awesome Landscape Products in Tokyo, and what do I find? A little kit for a Herman Miller kite. It seems to date from around 1980. The triangular pieces covered with...
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July 25, 2008

Mamma Mia, El Gatto Meo di Bruno Munari, Senza Volto!

Turns out vulcanized rubber cats have less than nine lives. In 1949 Bruno Munari made some special promotional black cats called Gatto Meo for Pirelli using the company's flagship product. It's not known how many survive [the image below...
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July 24, 2008

Thank You, Target, May I Have Another? Elmo LikeABike Knockoff

So maybe Target was just testing the waters when they steamrolled Like-A-Bike last year with their own $50 made-in-China knockoff. Because not only are they back, they're expecting you to pay ten bucks more for the Elmo version and...
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July 22, 2008

Voluskrin: OG Icelandic Toys

No sheep--or polar bears--were harmed in the making of this fascinating, old school Icelandic toybox and toy set. The little bone fragments and such are made of plastic:In Icelandic farmhouses of yesteryear, children had a special hiding place for...
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July 20, 2008

Wow, Wow What Have We Here? Plush Noggin 'Clones'

When you've been sewing for 50 years like Gramma Ruth, you don't "knock off" anything, least of all the so-far unlicensed, unmonetized characters of some media conglomerate-come-lately like Nickelodeon. No, when you make your own homebrew plush versions of...
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July 18, 2008

Bag-o-Bones: PBK-Meets-CSI

Nothing adds edgy ambiance to your pleasantly whitebread merchandise mix quite like a child-size skeleton. On the one hand, paper pulp doesn't have the long-term playability of wood, or even plastic. On the other hand, IT'S 30% OFF! monogramming...
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Nobi-Nobi Disney Ball Tower Of The Apocalypse

Holy crap, Takara Tomy! Flashing lights, multiple melody buttons, melody balls, sounds, raising towers, spiraling ball tracks--inside and out--ball hiders, ball holders, ball chutes, clocks, butterflies, Mickey, Minnie, Donald...The insane Nobi-Nobi Ball Tower has 16 [!] separate features for...
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July 14, 2008

Awesome Baby-Sized Ply Play Kitchen By Shiroma Somebody

When I first saw this plywood play kitchen at Mary-Branche, a Japanese online kids&moms boutique, I thought it was nice and simple. If a little chunky, what'd they do, double up the plywood? Wow, check out the smooth finish,...
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July 3, 2008

Can We Enamel It? YES WE CAN! Hello Kitty Tonka Truck

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } GVWR Payload Testing, originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics. Uh-uh. I guess when your dad's the...
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June 27, 2008

Antiques Backroadshow: Vintage Vinyl In Goldsboro

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Olde Country Store, Goldsboro, NC, originally uploaded by daddytypes. Full of Wilber's barbecue and looking...
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June 26, 2008

Garden Gnomes Not Included: Sweet Community Playthings Tractor On eBay

Dayton, Ohio bidders will have the advantage on this awesome, old Community Playthings ride-on tractor. Though it's just under 11 inches high, all that maple lumber and those chunky Firestone tires will cost a bundle to ship. Maybe when...
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June 23, 2008

Tryon Toy Makers: For Kids By Kids

Didn't see that one coming. While getting in touch with my North Carolina roots by poking around the special collections at UNC-Asheville, I stumbled across the archives of the Tryon Toy Makers, a company founded in Tryon, NC during...
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Giant Foam KidsCars Not Available In Green

I gottalotta nerve complaining about the Internet's short-term memory when I can't remember if I've written about these giant upholstered, padded foam KidsCars before. It seems like I have, if only because polyurethane is an odd material for a...
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June 21, 2008

Florent, We'll Miss You! But Check Out These Awesome Maps--And Morellet Guerineau??

Last weekend we took K2 for her first visit to Florent. Also her last, because Florent's closing in less than two weeks. I'd planned on many years of boring brunches where I'd explain to the kids how daddy and...
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June 20, 2008

Will These Lifelike [sic] Wall-E and Eve Robots Come To The US?

Whoa, these laptop-size Wall-E and Eve robots were at the Tokyo Toy Fair. Do you think Takara Tomy will bring them to the US? Next week? Tokyo Toy Show 2008, or check out the video directly on YouTube [kilian-nakamura...
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June 17, 2008

Sweet, Church-Tested Folding Climber From Community Playthings

Demand for this awesome, folding Community Playthings climbing gym must have dropped off some time after the Planet of the Apes trend faded away, because it's no longer in production. Fortunately, this one is available for pickup in Rochester,...
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June 16, 2008

DT Renegade Craft Fair Round-up

Staging the Renegade Craft Fair in the Pool at McCarren Park Pool is a great way to crystallize the cultural divide that is Williamsburg: you walk through thousands of Hispanic families camped out under every tree in the park,...
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June 15, 2008

Have You Seen Me? Or Maybe Several Of Me?

Just as we planned, the kid adopted one of my mother's flannel blankets with a hand-crocheted edge for her snuggly comforting thing. I say planned, because we kind of pushed it, because they were always right at hand, and...
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June 13, 2008

RIP, Thomas Creat-- Wait, David Mitton Animated The Thunderbirds!

David Mitton, the children's TV producer who brought The Rev. Wilbert Vere Awdry's bedtime stories of Thomas the Tank Engine to lucrative, oddly animated life, has died. But Thomas Schmomas, the guy also did The Thunderbirds! That means Thomas...
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June 12, 2008

We'll Wrap Up Our Own Nostalgia, Thanks, Strawberry Shortcake

So there was a big licensing expo in New York this week, which apparently resulted in a phony trend story in the NY Times about companies redesigning their old licensed character properties to milk a new generation of nostalgic parents:...
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June 11, 2008

Prouve/Corbu/Perriand Kid's Room? But Where'd That Dog Come From?

Though the picture's from Elle Decor, not Interior Design, I think this is Florence Lopez's son's "lacquered Jean Prouvé bed" with "a cork bulletin board that Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand designed for two French universities" over it. I...
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Wigs And Cigs And Writing Gigs

If the Theresa in this photo is the Theresa I think it is, let the record show she did not, in fact, grow up to be a lounge singer like her parents wished; she's a writer who works for a...
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Vintage Barbapapa Doll: How You Say, "Mangy"?

Sometimes vintage is truly the best: like with furniture. And sometimes, it ain't: like, uh, with gnarly, black-furred, stuffed dolls from popular 1970's French children's book series. Better to buy your Barbapapa plush dolls and fondue pots new, like...
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For Those About To Rock: Plush Guitars & Band Members By The Grateful Thread

Awesome. Nicolas Worth and Jami Gigot are designers in London who have just launched The Grateful Thread, a little collection of crafty rock&roll-themed products, which includes some plush/stuffed creations. Chief among the offerings are the stuffed guitars they're life-size...
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June 10, 2008

Freakin. Awesome. Banaue Filipino Like-A-Biker Gang

So you want to talk about wooden walking bikes? Kevin Kelly's got a small but amazing collection of photos of Like-A-Bike-like wooden bikes from all over the world. [If you're a bike entrepreneur looking for a way to out-maneuver...
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June 9, 2008

Chris Burden's Massive Erector

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Rockefeller Center, originally uploaded by peterjr1961. What My Dad Gave Me by Chris Burden is...
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June 7, 2008

Found: That Jean Prouvé Swing Set

I didn't think much of it at the time, but once the kid came along, I always wondered where that 1960's Jean Prouvé swing set Patrick Seguin showed at Sonnabend in 2003 ended up. The answer is on art...
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June 5, 2008

99 Laufmaschines, Or Seriously, Stop Inventing The Like-A-Bike!

Do we need to lay it out on a timeline for you? Because I haven't seen so many people inventing the exact same unique toy since, since--well, I guess those plush people do it all the time. BUT STILL!...
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This Week In Like-A-Like-A-Bike News

The Like-a-Bike knockoff scene is suddenly hopping for some reason. To wit: A retailer recently commented on the original DT post about the Skuut--the one that busted them for knocking off the Like-A-Bike in China, and the one which called...
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Uhh, Plush Naked Hitler Doll

Yeah, for about half a second, I thought it was because the artist and the gallery were German. But then I figured that plush naked Hitlers and cuddly [kuddly?] KKK dolls would be seriously disturbed anywhere. Bimbo dolls by...
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Knit Snakes. Why'd It Have To Be Knit Snakes?

From the introduction to Nina Braun's exhibition at Helium Cowboy Gallery in Hamburg:Nina Braun has always cut her own path, irrespective of social guidelines or standards. Through self-teaching, experiences and experiments, she has built the fundament she needs to...
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June 3, 2008

Holgate Soda Set One Bottletop Shy Of A Six-Pack

I like this cool set of wooden bottles, tinted in the colors of six common wine cooler flavors. They're made by Holgate, one of the earliest US companies to develop educational toys. Unfortunately, one of the bottle stoppers is...
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June 2, 2008

Montgomery Schoolhouse Rocks

Montgomery Whohouse? I've been following the items eBay seller Creative Magpie has been putting up for sale from the inventory of her mother's 1970's toy store. In the last couple of days, several very fine-looking wooden toys have turned...
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May 30, 2008

Hmmm: Herman Miller Stuffed Centaur Looks Like Marilyn Neuhart Stuffed Centaur

Wright20 dates this shaggy centaur stuffed toy to 1961, but for some reason, they don't mention Marilyn Neuhart at all, just Herman Miller, thanks to a label on the back that reads, "Licenciatarios de Herman Miller Industria Argentina Coleccio'n...
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May 28, 2008

Old Toy Shopful Of Creative Playthings On eBay

There's been a whole slew of vintage Creative Playthings toys turning up on eBay the last few days, all in beautiful, unused, condition. For collectors or just folks who like their vintage wooden toys unbeat and unchewed-on, it's like...
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May 25, 2008

Unhappy Meal

This photo at Consumerist of a funny sign at McDonald's reminded me of the kid's own discovery of the secret of Happy Meals. Personally, I was just going for the pies, but I couldn't very well just eat pies...
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May 20, 2008

I, For One, Welcome Our New Russian Oligarch Overlords--With These Blocks!

With all their petrorubles, the Russians are buying up the entire art world! Soon they'll be coming for Rockefeller Center. [Will they do any better than the Japanese did? Stay tuned!] I'm not saying you should fire your Mandarin-speaking...
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CP^2: Old Minimalist Dollhouses On eBay

Not sure if this is a sign that the doll real estate market is softening, but two fully furnished classic modernist dollhouses just went up on eBay. The big Creative Playthings house above is like an analog version of...
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May 19, 2008

'Quirky' Garmento Dad On Bowery Drives Orbit Stroller

Entertaining family stories and crazy New York real estate stories go hand in hand. Andrew Gluckman and his family live in a throwback Bowery St apartment: no lease on two crooked floors above a lighting store in a building...
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May 15, 2008

Hippie Or Hipster? Harmony Ball Company Chiming Spheres Rattles At Areaware

So I read on notcot that Areaware, the NYC design studio/distributor is planning to launch a kid's collection called Areaware Jr. [they already distribute Salvor Fauna's silkscreen t-shirts and Onesies, as well as a few toys]. Then I see...
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May 13, 2008

And If Medicaid Doesn't Pay For Your Kid's Ringbo Riding Robot Chair, We'll Reimburse You!

Honestly, forget teaching your kid Mandarin; Korea is where the future is at. The future of ride-on toys that look an awful lot like the cart grandma gets at the mall; the future of snappy brand coinage ["RINGBO will be...
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May 12, 2008

The Playhouse That Love Built In The Garage

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } playhouse - full view, originally uploaded by shanecyr. A trip to Lowe's and a weekend...
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May 9, 2008

Lotta Jansdotter's Stuffed Toys Are Eco-Friendly!

Sure, I thought they were small and cute and pleasantly crafty, and the colors called forth fond memories of the fridges of my childhood. But thanks to the seven [seriously, I counted] mentions of their sustainable eco-friendliness in a...
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May 8, 2008

How! Sweet Creative Playthings Totem Pole [??] On eBay

Sure, there's a fine-looking Creative Playthings dollhouse on eBay at the moment, complete with a family of squatter dolls, who at least haven't tossed out the matchy [if not all matching] furniture. But who cares when there's a freakin'...
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Little Red Stuga Keeps Making Toy Versions Of Landscape

If you were wondering what features of the Swedish landscape the design team at Little Red Stuga has been turning into kid-sized play furniture lately, now you know: a folding screen house with mirrors on one side; and a...
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May 7, 2008

Now That's Vitalian! Sweet Nesting Dollhouse By Kaefer

Kaefer is German for "beetle," and this sleek, alderwood dollhouse by the toymaker Kaefer is German for, "You can't go wrong by taking a cue from Antonio Vitali." If only it was a little bigger than six inches--no, you...
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May 2, 2008

Playgoda: Slot-Together Playground Nirvana

So this morning Andy forwards me a link to a very promising blog, Playscape, which will focus on the art and science of playground design. And one of the first posts is the Playgoda, an awesome, slot-together laminated plywood...
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I.D. Q&A Re: Kid O Toys

I.D. Magazine just published a little Q&A with Kid O founder Lisa Mahar, who talks about the ideas, design, and production of the new Kid O Toys collection. Mahar sounds like they're doing things very right, and not just...
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April 28, 2008

We've Come A Long Way, Childcraft?

Hi-larious. From the hippies to the CPSC to women's lib, the times in 1974, they were definitely a-changin'. Here are some items from the 1974-5 Childcraft catalog that I can't imagine seeing at a Toys R Us near you...
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April 26, 2008

Bunker Hill Lacquered Steel Doll McMansion

Daniel Franzen's painted steel dollhouse has serious curb appeal. The shape is inspired by Swedish barns, and relates to a series of cabins Franzen's firm, Bunker Hill, is designing for the reclaimed wood specialty firm Arvesund. It comes with...
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April 22, 2008

Play-Dodecahedron! The Popular Science Meditator By Ken Isaacs

"'Bye for now,' says the man of the house as he retreats into think tank. Though it dominates a room, it can be quickly disassembled. At [right] Isaacs contemplates interior collage." Ken Isaacs, is there anything modular and plywood...
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April 19, 2008

Sweet Sport France Jouet A Bascule

Just in case you didn't learn how to say "rocking horse" in French--because frankly, you were only learning French to pick up chicks, not shop for playground implements--now you know: un cheval à bascule. Thus, this jouet à bascule,...
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April 18, 2008

Creative Playthings Houseboat, Minus The Wet T-shirted Playthings

The seller has titled this 1960's Creative Playthings boat Noah's Ark, even though there are no animals. Obviously, though, it's from the very rare Creative Playthings Lake Havasu Spring Break Playset. If only Antonio Vitali's hand-carved, bikini-wearing co-eds and...
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April 13, 2008

Oshiri Kajiri Mushi Goods, Finally

I've grown a bit skeptical of the origins of most every sudden Japanese trend. With the Oshiri Kajiri Mushi, aka Bottom Biting Bug, cartoon that washed over Japan last summer, it wasn't until the late fall/Christmas season before Japan's...
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April 9, 2008

"Blatantly Unfocused Play With Their Daddy"

I'm re-reading Calvin Trillin's 1998 book, Family Man, and it's rather more interesting now that I'm a dad. Jim's right, he's the godfather of all typing daddies, not just those who make a big deal about changing tables in the...
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April 8, 2008

Creative Playthings Tug Boat On The eBay

If there's wear on this vintage Finnish tug boat & barge set from Creative Playthings, I can't really see it in the photo. And before I start a bidding war at $22 shipped for a used wooden toy, I'd...
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April 5, 2008

Vamanos! NAFTAstic Dora Minivan Of Canada

Do not adjust your screen. You are not dreaming. NAFTA is real, and it is working hard for Canadian children every. single. minute. That IS a photo of an American minivan [the Chevrolet Uplander, made in Doraville, Georgia! Until...
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April 2, 2008

Vintage Kettler: Puts The Rad In Dreirad

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Chromjuwelen Kettler Dreirad, originally uploaded by chromjuwelen. With their Happy AIr, Happy Plus, Happy Plus...
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April 1, 2008

From Germany To Silverlake With Love: Flototto Kids Chair

So we went poking around Silverlake today, the girls and I. Yolk is nice. But hey-o, Monkeyhouse Toys?? Awesome. The hyper-indie toy store has more than a few kidult-oriented toys, but first and foremost, it's a toy store for...
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March 31, 2008

Hmm, BabyGap Home Seems To Have A Daddy Gap

Well, that didn't take long. BabyGap Home went live on the gap.com site today, and first impressions: not bad, for a total chickfest. It's definitely a small, tightly edited collection of brands and stuff; the BabyGap flagship product seems...
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March 29, 2008

Old Toyseller Coughs Up Two Sweet Antonio Vitali Animals

Clear out a few more curio cabinetsful of these new-old-stock Antonio Vitali animals, and I think a certain retired, Connecticut toy store owner will be able to get that condo in Boca. Of course, with the way the Florida...
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March 27, 2008

Awesome: Lower Back Tattoos By Toys R Us

What's this? Tramp stamps for sale in the Stickers R Us machine at Toys R Us? I smell a comprehensive cross-platform blitzertunity! Apparently, so does Disney. That other options I can make out are Hannah Montana, Clubhouse Disney, and...
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March 26, 2008

Sweet Kidshouse From Studiomama

More sweet loft modules cribbed from magazines. I was really digging the Lego wall, so grabbed this shot of Nina Tolstrup's painted MDF kidshouse from her profile in the latest issue of Dwell. Only when I got home did...
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March 25, 2008

DT Link Roundup: PC, ABC, APC, RR, HR Edition

Some headlines and links from the DT browser tabs: One WSJ dad knows he's ruining his 5-yo son's future by not teaching him more about computers. but dammit, we didn't need Webkinz when we were that age; we blew our...
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West Coast Wagons Theoretically Not Just For Celebrity Gifting Anymore

At first I was too blown away by the website's name--My Wholesale Baby--to worry that the authentic ammunition boxes add 15 pounds to West Coast Wagons' custom camo rig. Then I was whipsawed by the sales pitch:From hand painted...
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March 22, 2008

Students Design HaPe Bamboo Toys During 3-Hour Tour, A 3-Hour Tour

Last year, the CEO of Swiss toy company HaPe invited a group of Israeli design students to participate in a Bamboo Design Workshop. For a couple of weeks, the students and their professors lived, ate, and slept [with] bamboo...
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March 19, 2008

House For Sale. Giant, Foam Blocks House For Sale

With a name like Studio Papas, I think I'd love whatever Koen Crommentuijn and Marjan Verboeket put out. The fact that it's House for Sale, or Speelhuis, a set of twelve, giant cold-foam blocks shaped like classic wooden blocks...
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March 18, 2008

DT Link Roundup: Back In The Day Edition

Clearing the ol' browser tabs: The NY Times used a new Central Park playground as a slightly irrelevant hook for discussing a new book from Rutgers University Press, Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children. Apparently,...
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Sugoi: Japanese Folk Toy Design Database

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } halloweenesque octopus, originally uploaded by peacay. FYI, "sugoi" means "great!" and is used sort of...
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March 17, 2008

Win One For The Little Zipper! Creative Playthings Mail Scooter On eBay

Haven't seen one of these turn up on eBay before. It's a Creative Playthings Mail Scooter called the Little Zipper, presumably a reference to the 5-digit Zip Code, which was being promoted for general use in the late 1960's...
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March 11, 2008

Totally Tubular Rocking Horse On eBay

I would love nothing more than to get a gloating email from someone next week explaining what an incredible deal they got on this thing, and how could I not recognize this ultra-rare, tubular steel rocking horse that Giorgetto...
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March 10, 2008

Vintage Community Playthings Original Maple Airplane

Haven't had a lot of the random eBay finds on here lately, probably because I haven't had as much time for the random eBay surfing as I used to. But I always like to see these giant maple jets...
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March 8, 2008

The Custom Playmobil Kid Is Not My Son

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Mobison 3-1, originally uploaded by 091. Playmo91 is a mad Playmobil customizer in Taiwan who...
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March 6, 2008

Oh My Heck! Extreme Yo Gabba Gabba! Craftiness

If their rabidly crafty fans keep up this pace, Yo Gabba Gabba! may never need to bother putting out actual merchandise at all; instead they can be like PBS painting guru Bob Ross, making mad bank by selling raw materials--paints,...
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March 5, 2008

They're There! Serena Kuhl's Poltergeist Stuffed Toys

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } poltergrab, originally uploaded by serenakuhl. Freaking Awesome. I KNEW I shouldn't have blown off last...
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March 4, 2008

USTA Tees Up Slam-dunk Plan To Teach Little Kids Tennis: Move The Goalposts

I'll lift the blogging blackout about the kid's preschool just enough to say that last weekend was the school's fundraising auction, and we bought her some tennis lessons. Then it dawned on me that a handful of tennis lessons with...
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March 3, 2008

Wow. Sixteen Other Animals Puzzle NOT By Enzo Mari

vs. I have to agree with the design gurus at Tokyo's Graphio/Buro-stil on this one: sometimes a copy rises above the level of mere knockoff to attain a remarkable beauty of its own. Like a cover version or a...
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February 26, 2008

Handknit Sackboy From LittleBigPlanet

To those PlayStation 3 people who have been waiting like a year for LittleBigPlanet to be released, you'll be relieved to know the delay is not due to a sudden breakout of knitting circles in the Media Molecule offices;...
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February 25, 2008

Which Enzo Mari 16 Animals Puzzle You Talking About?

I imagine collectors of Enzo Mari's rather awesome puzzle, "16 Animali," already know this, but it seems like the kind of reference data that's worth filing away. Now when you find an old 16 Animali in a thrift shop,...
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What, Me Worry? Plastic Bozart Dollhouse Market Is Meltdown-Proof!

I don't care if they're New In Box. If you buy these two Bozart Kaleidoscope dollhouses for $3200 or more, we need to talk. Well, let me qualify that: we need to talk if you have some unique and...
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February 22, 2008

Security Theater Of The Absurd: Scan-It Toy Security Checkpoint

I know it looks like just a cardboard box with a jacked up Homeland Security Threat Level sticker on the side, but the Operation Checkpoint Scan-It toy security X-ray machine is much more. It has some little beeping thing...
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Fun, New SWINXS Encourages Fitness, Robotic Subservience

When I first saw SWINXS on Engadget the other day, I thought it was just another of those RFID-enabled, programmable gaming platforms that purports to encourage physically active play while secretly conditioning children to the idea of taking orders...
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Toyetic?? If Yo Gabba Gabba! Is Star Wars, Then I'm Steven Spielberg

Gosh, how much I love Kidscreen, the trade magazine of the children's television industry [tagline: "About reaching children through entertainment"]? I'd love it even if my boys from Yo Gabba Gabba! weren't on the cover [:)] of the big, fat...
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FOUND! That Sweet Plexi Hospital Bassinet UNFORTUNATELY SMALL!

In his burgeoning collection of dad-and-newborn-related Playmobil pieces, Mr. Stinkhead features this tableau: a new dad videotaping a baby in one of those sweet, plexiglass and steel bassinets from the hospital. It's like Playmobil is jacked into my head,...
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February 21, 2008

Kid O Products: Kid O Goes Public With Sweet-Looking Toy Line

Well, there's one thing I regret about not going to the Toy Fair: I missed the public debut of Kid O's new toy collection. Since first catching wind of it last summer, I've been stoked, waiting to see these...
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Offecct Playhouse: Toys For The Office

Kidsmodern has a report from the Stockholm Furniture Fair that's worth checking out. It includes some new pieces from the Danish folks at Collect Furniture, but the idea that caught my attention is the Playhouse set by Andres Breitholtz...
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What Does Daddy Do With All His Playmobil?

Finally, Mr. Stinkhead has figured out what to do with his massive Playmobil collection while his son is still in the Serious Choke Hazard Stage. he set up little dioramas, took some pictures, and made a little book called,...
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Signs Of The Merchalypse: Yo Gabba Gabba! At The NY Toy Fair

I didn't make the NY Toy Fair this year, and it's probably just as well; the sheer volume of plastic, beeping, exploitative crap would likely send me into a new baby funk, and then I'd only be posting angry takedowns...
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February 20, 2008

A Long Time Ago In A Star Wars Tie-In Pitch To Pepsi Far, Far Away

I think we can all agree that, in retrospect, a Jabba the Hutt beanbag chair would have sold far more Pepsi than a life-size mannequin of Jar Jar Binks, even though Jabba wasn't even in Episode One [d'oh, I've...
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Indiana Jones And The Out-Of-Control Toy Licensee

It's Toy Fair Week, and there's a new movie coming out. So I have to assume these are real, and that Hasbro expects preschool-age children actually will play with a Nazi dressed up as a Jewish priest; and an...
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February 18, 2008

"Fabricators' Kids Have The NICEST Bikes."

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Vanilla Cycles 001, originally uploaded by brianwickman. The North American Handmade Bicycle Show was held...
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February 15, 2008

Wow, Toy Quinny Zapp, Complete With Mini-Cosi

DT reader Kim just linked to this in the Miniboo post below. It's an honest-to-goodness toy version of the Quinny Zapp. To make up for the fact that it doesn't have the same folding mechanism as the full-size Zapp,...
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February 14, 2008

Ay Caramba! Behold, El Miniboo

Though I've blocked the pain from my mind, longtime readers of DT may be familiar with the trials of the original Mini-boo, the toy-sized Bugaboo I tried to make one Christmas from one of those Riesenthel picnic baskets at...
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Victoria's Secrets To Successful Parenting

The NYT's critical shopper column this week takes on the giant Victoria's Secret across from Macy's, "a slick, two-story mega-sexopolis, catering mainly to the boudoir needs of angry tourists." It's pretty damn funny [though I'm crying for America on...
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February 12, 2008

It's Fun To Crochet A Muno Amigurumi, And That's How You Do It

I'm no expert, but I think if you have the Brother NC-7340 printer/scanner/fax/crocheter set up on your network, you just load whatever color of yarn you need--in this case, red-- and cut & paste this crocheting code from Craftster,...
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February 11, 2008

I Think I Know Where One Of Those Sumi Ink Club Mobiles Is

Warning: convoluted, punk hipster ramble, combined with 80's and 90's flashbacks, ending with very slightly relevant payoff but realistically, probably none at all ahead: So there was an outlaw outdoor concert on the banks of the LA River last November...
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February 6, 2008

High-End Auction Therapy, Maybe: Renata Mueller's Therapeutic Toys

Around 1969 and into the 70's Renata Mueller [that Müller, with an umlaut, btw] designed a collection of therapeutic toys with a former instructor, Helene Haeusler, for the venerable German teddy bear manufacturer, H. Josef Leven. Based in the...
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February 5, 2008

Please Tell Me This Lucha Catman Puzzle Will Go Into Production

I've been waiting for this Lucha Catman puzzle ever since I saw the chunky MDF prototype last spring at the Bubbly NY trade show. It's from the always-awesome Our Children's Gorilla [and yes, they were awesome even before they...
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January 31, 2008

Sometimes A Plush Ring Stacking Toy Is Just A Plush Ring Stacking Toy

This is not one of those times. Last fall in Miami, I bought the new kid a Muffin stacking plush toy by Friends With You [$22]. Now I love my Friends With You. I mean, the kid's Friends With You....
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Haba Volume Box

What a weird toy. Kudos to Haba for not painting it in bright rainbow colors, like so many of their other things. Is the 10x10x10 grid inside geared to actual units, like centimeters? It doesn't seem like it. Haba...
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Freaky Awesome Spooky Daddy

[via] Seriously, it's freaking me out right now how awesome Spooky Daddy's plush toys and creatures and whatevers are. Actually, thanks to his awesome Flickr photostream, it's been gnawing at me for months now, like a plush Prometheus getting...
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January 30, 2008

Crafty Rec Room Masterpiece: Atari Breakout Pillow

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Crafting 365 Day 010, originally uploaded by jackrabbit.etsy.com. Holy smokes, It's like I'm eight years...
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January 24, 2008

Like-A-Crawligator? Creative Playthings 'Comet' On eBay

The casters are a different color, there doesn't appear to be a box, and it's apparently called 'The Comet,' but otherwise, this 23" long biomorphic spaceship scooterboard looks an awful lot like Creative Playthings' Crawligator. Either it's the same...
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January 23, 2008

There Will Be Poo: Floating Booga Mobiles By Sumi Ink Club

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } floating booga, originally uploaded by lukey dargons. The LA artist collaborative known as Sumi Ink...
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January 22, 2008

The Least Favorite Floor Puzzle In Free & Independent Papua New Guinea

The kid's been something of a puzzle fanatic for a while now, which gives the grandparents just the in they need to shower her with unbidden gifts. Making the most of it, we've been explaining what states, countries, and...
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Ty Wants To Fight. For His Right. To Keep Selling Lead Toys, Dammit!

As if sucking the brains out of mid-American grandmas with Beanie Baby Mania and spending their life savings buying up ultra-luxury real estate weren't scourge enough, now Ty, Inc. is defying the law, refusing to take its lead-tainted toys...
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Bozart Kaleidoscope Doll Houses Will Certainly Be More Expensive Tomorrow

Real estate crisis? What real estate crisis? The market for seven-year-old plastic doll houses has NEVER BEEN HOTTER! If you don't buy today, prices will absolutely be higher tomorrow! And the next day! 100% financing available! Foreign investors are...
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January 21, 2008

DT eBay Scoutabout: Fire Sale Edition

Watching the live auctions today has wrought havoc on the ol' browser. In the time since I started trying to post about it, this sweet, vintage Creative Playthings fire station jumped from 99 cents to $21.50, which is more...
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January 18, 2008

When Hulk Get Chewed, Hulk Get Choke Hazardy: Stan Lee Tribute Art Exhibition

Gallery1988 is hosting an exhibition of Stan Lee tribute art by some of their indie artist friends. There's lots of mopey goth riffs on Spidey and plenty of Scarlet Witch and Ororo Munroe pin-up fantasies. But there's some sweet,...
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Get It For You Wholesale? eBayer Selling Mod Kid Gear At Unusually Low Prices

Yeah, I could just email Hillsborough, CA eBay seller Noodledoodle.home to see how they're offering new, high-end toys and kids furniture on eBay for seemingly crazylow, non-MSRP prices. But with the new kid-related caps on my daily typing quota,...
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January 16, 2008

Optimistic CPSC Chairwoman Pronounces Recall Glass "Not 95.5% Empty, 4.5% Full!"

Looks like we missed CPSC Chairwoman Nancy Nord's speech last week at the National Press Club, the one where she criticized the media for its "near-hysteria" and "hoopla" over the record-setting number of product recalls in 2007. In fact, Nord...
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January 15, 2008

2007 Safety Stories: I Have Some Good News & Some Bad News

First, the good news: Phthalates are still leaching from your kid's vinyl toys, and Bisphenol-A is still leaching from your polycarbonate bottles and the linings of your formula cans! At first, when it was named Worst Science Story of 2007...
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January 3, 2008

OG Hardwood Block Wagon By John Michael Linck

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Fine Hardwood Toys by John Michael Linck - 5, originally uploaded by johnthetoymaker. You gotta...
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Una Bassinet Maravillosa, Uno Aluminum I-Beam Like-A-Bike From Barcelona

Traveling to Europe for the holidays sans car seat apparently frees up your hands to take sweet photos for random blogs. That's the lesson we learn from DT CARES testing correspondent Darren. Here's an awesome-looking wood-and-plexi box-on-sticks bassinet he...
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January 2, 2008

Japan Launches Toy Train To Nowhere

Alright, people, enough with the hyperventilating over Japan's "Omoden" Toy Train [Omoden is short for Omocha Densha, or Toy Train]. Saying there's a Toy Train in Japan is like saying there's a monorail in America, except that at least...
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Poky The Adorable Linux Mobile Build Platform Mascot

The UK branding agency TAK! created this identity for Poky, a new Linux embedded build platform and environtment optimized for mobile cross-application development. Which is exactly why the client, OpenEmbedded OpenedHand, also wanted a mascot. Because even if Poky...
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December 26, 2007

Wait, What's Wrong With The CPSC Reauthorization Act??

Somehow I missed this in my pre-Christmas inbox: "Dec. 21, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JPMA SUPPORTS PASSAGE OF CPSC REAUTHORIZATION ACT" If the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association is trumpeting their support for a piece of safety regulation-related legislation, something must...
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Little S0f1a Loves Her Not Neutral Alphabet Blocks!

The era of the art blocks may be upon us. Not Neutral has introduced their own graphically sweetened set of ABC blocks that include apple and tree patterns on three faces, and letters and numbers in a groovy Sister...
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December 25, 2007

Are The Stores In The Soft City Open Or Closed On Boxing Day?

The Soft City is a Toronto-based artists' collective who have charged themselves with creating and managing a cuddly plush city in miniature. Sort of a Sim City with sewing machines instead of computers:We recognize the mutually defining relationship between the...
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December 21, 2007

DT Window Shopping Roundup: Wooden Bikes, Euro Magazines, Baby Daddy Edition

Some things spotted around the web: Even though they're tacky and kind of insipid--well, the World Wildlife Federation was, the one for bigger kids, from National Geographic, is not that bad--the kid absolutely loves getting her magazines. It's mail! For...
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Hail To Skelter! Sweet, Sweet Pedal Cars By Piet Hein Eek

Holy. Moley. Henk Vos asked fellow Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek to make some pedal cars for his grandkids to race. After a year, they came up with the Skelter: three speeds plus reverse, aluminum and leather and rubber...
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December 20, 2007

Great To Be Us: Sweet Handcarved Cars From Milano

To be Us cars and such are designed by Matteo Ragni and handcarved by Master Giovanni out of a single block of Lebanese cedar. Then they're outfitted with mahogany wheels. The windshield on Il Pick Up, which looks like...
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December 19, 2007

In The Garden Of Playmobil, Baby, Don't You Know That I Lo-ove You?

Seriously, why did I ever doubt that, when it came to plastic play gardens, no one could beat Playmobil? The suggestions for different Playmobil garden options took over my inbox yesterday like kudzu engulfing a Georgia Tech co-ed's parked car...
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Mo Gabba Gabba! Mo Gabba Gabba!

Mike Schneider, a self-proclaimed dadblogging media whore [he writes for Variety] and huge Yo Gabba Gabba! fan, reports that the show has been picked up for a second, full season. The 20 new episodes are already in pre-production.For season two,...
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December 18, 2007

Huh? So The Kid Wants A Plastic Garden?

I haven't gotten all holiday this and gift list that this year; a lot of blogs are cranking out a lot of shopping lists, and I hope they make a lot of money doing it. The kid, though, is...
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December 12, 2007

Wait, So Did He Build The Plexiglass Playhouse?

From a photo tour of a Massachusetts family's loft, which is in a converted elementary school, Apartment Therapy, March 2005:That huge cardboard tube is going to be an access route through which the kids will crawl to reach a...
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December 9, 2007

Like A Like-A-Bike For Grownups, By Camper

Tina's mention of her wish for a grown-up sized Like-a-Bike reminded me of this photo I snapped a couple of weeks ago in SoHo. It's a regular bike, modded or skinned with plywood to look like a Like-A-Bike. Camper,...
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December 7, 2007

Crazalert Dec. 10-12: Yoya To Fill Someone's Loft With Merch, Sell It For "Insane" Discounts

Yoya's having a sample/warehouse/clearance/blowout sale next week, and you and your cash are invited. Not sure what they have planned, whether it's just books, clothes and toys, or whether there are Netto and ducduc nursery setups for immediate delivery,...
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December 5, 2007

Waldi The Munich 1972 Olympic Wunderhund

Apparently the pinnacle of mod Olympic graphic design was reached in 1972 for the Munich summer games. The logos, signs, marketing, and mascots--everything down to and including the souvenirs--represented a triumph of the will, so to speak, of Otl...
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December 4, 2007

The Boyms Put The Babel Blocks New Yorker Dolls On The MySpace, The YouTube

Babel Blocks are New Yorkers, each unique in his or her religious and cultural affiliations, but underneath, they're all the same: i.e., made from wooden blocks. Get it? Just like we're all the-- Also, they all have a MySpace,...
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Swanky Ikea See-Saw Breaks Kid's, My Heart

Martin Rosquist's Vippig see-saw, made of molded and shaped birch ply for Ikea is absolutely beautiful to look at. Unless your kid is trying to ride it all by herself, and there are no other kids around the store,...
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TchotchkeWatch: Alessi Modern Nativity Set

One of my earliest memories of visiting my grandparents' house was the veritable army of porcelain figurines that filled the tables and shelves. [The Hummels were behind glass.] There were these French poodles, where the puppies' collars were chained to...
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December 3, 2007

Aww, Playmobil Child Soldiers, &c.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } unicef_playmobil_child_soldiers, originally uploaded by daddytypes. It's not clear if these print ads for Unicef Canada...
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Can You ID This Vintage Eskimo Playset?

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Vintage Eskimo Playset from the 70's, originally uploaded by daddytypes. In the off chance that...
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December 2, 2007

O Holy Moley, The Playmobil Nativity Set

I don't know why Playmobil can still surprise me with the exhaustiveness of their playsets. The Playmobil Nativity Set's not even new; it's been around since at least 2003 [that's the date of the first Amazon review, anyway.] Though...
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Is That A Cardboard Doll House I See Before Me?

I've had this 1969 Form Magazine photo of cardboard kid's furniture on my desktop all week, but I just noticed the dollhouse to the right. Ilse-Werke KG, the German company behind the furniture, leaves no trace that I can...
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November 30, 2007

Muji Now Ready For Your Xmas Shopping List

I was going to offer up a trip to the Muji corner at MoMA's Design Store for the toy-desperate among you [the store has some of those recycled yarn-woven animals and both New York- and Countryside-in-a-Bag, though no Suburbs in...
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November 27, 2007

Suh-weet Elephant Bank By Luigi Colani

In the 1970's, Luigi Colani took a break from designing the future to create a little elephant-shaped bank for Dresdner Bank to give out to the kids. One has found its way to Lancaster, PA, and from thence to...
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November 26, 2007

The Show, DVD's, And Licensed Merchandise Deals Must Go On

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you're an Irwin, everything looks like an awareness-building merchandising opportunity, I guess. Eight-year-old Bindi Irwin, who grew up on camera the family's televised zoo/set, mourns her late father...
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November 25, 2007

Sweet Creative Playthings Trove From Finland Via Texas

Just in time for the holidays, eBay seller twobluepups posted a great-looking trio of vintage Creative Playthings wooden toy lots. All the auctions end Dec. 3rd. The two Playtown sets are in good condition and complete with the box,...
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November 23, 2007

Vintage Creative Playthings Kaleidoscope: Meh.

Last month I bought an old wooden Creative Playthings kaleidoscope on eBay. The transaction went fine, but the toy itself is not that great. Now don't get me wrong: I'm with it enough to dig the potential beauty of...
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E Is For Expo 67 Puzzle & Coloring Books, Also For Eh

I got all excited last night when I saw a big jigsaw puzzle from the Expo 67 in Montreal, which was the overall raddest Expo ever. [Even if there were no Buckminster Fuller sphere, Habitat, or Dutch pavilion made...
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November 21, 2007

Muji Barcelona-In-A-Bag, Pavilion Included

Alright, that's rather brilliant. The new addition this year to Muji's ______-in-a-Bag series of wooden toys is Barcelona. And it includes a little wooden Mies Barcelona Pavilion, along with the Sagrada Familia and La Pedrera apartments by Gaudi. The...
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Muji Celebrates Xmas Across The Sea

note: these particular drawn designs not included. Unless Muji is run by grinches, some of these fiiiine Xmas collection items will turn up in the new SoHo store very soon. And if not, at least you'll have it to...
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November 20, 2007

High Five To 10 Grain For Their Molded Ply Play Furniture

Eric Pfeiffer, of the Offi and Modernseed Pfeiffers, and one of the contemporary masters of molded ply, is once again trying to mold his way into our hearts with his new furniture venture, 10 Grain, which had a sneak...
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November 19, 2007

Yotsubato Danbo Amazon Robot Toy Is Like Five Kinds Of Otaku

I tell you, you gotta watch out for the robots, they're turning up everywhere. This toy cardboard robot named Danbo was commissioned by Amazon Japan from Azuma Kiyohiko, the creator of the manga character Yotsuba-chan who lives with her...
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November 18, 2007

Paperpod Singlehandedly Revives The British Cardboard Spaceship Industry

Just as they once ruled the seas, the British once led the world in the development of the cardboard playspace race. The date was 1969, and while the US was fiddling around with some moon landing or another, the...
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November 17, 2007

Un. Be. Lievable Modernist Playhouse For Your Rather Spacious Loft

It's like the Farnsworth House without the floods; the Schindler Kings Rd House without the pegboard; the Case Study House No. 21 without the corrugated metal; the Barcelona Pavilion without the chairs [though I guess they're sold separately now.]...
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November 16, 2007

DT Headline Roundup: Do Unto Others Edition

Clearing the browser tabs before a weekend with the grandparents: Chick-Fil-A manages to bum out yet another family with their freebie toys. I didn't call a company spokesman, but I expect they'd point out that, for us sinners, no meal...
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Holy Land, Batman! Check Out These Other Pastel Toys!

So I may have been a little too cynical last night in my post about how Pastel Toys are produced. Turns out there actually is a remarkable, harmonious, nurturing village in Israel where community members of all races, religions,...
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November 15, 2007

Pastel Toys: What's So Fun About Peace, Love & Understanding?

Not only will the classic-styled, wooden toys of Pastel Toys entertain your child with hours of open-ended, imaginative play--most of it about Diehard [L] or the Trojan War [R], probably--they'll bring peace and harmony to the cradle of Western...
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Roy Toy Log Cabin Blocks Are OG, Made In Maine

So I didn't know that Lincoln Logs were developed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son, John in 1916-1917. I do know that they're currently made in China, though. Roy Toy log cabin building blocks didn't turn up until the 1930's,...
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Can You Arrange European Pickup For Your New M6 Kids' Convertible?

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Because then your kid could put the car through its paces at this test course...
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November 14, 2007

Bocós: The Blocks From Brazil

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Bocós, originally uploaded by Gizo. These sweet, screenprinted blocks put fresh characters and graphics into...
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November 13, 2007

Here, Have A Biscuit. Oreka Kids Plywood Play Furniture

Nothing's as fun for a kid's imagination as a cardboard box. Only problem is, no one's getting rich and/or famous just selling a cardboard box. [Unless you're The Container Store on a Sunday afternoon; holy crap, people, eight kinds...
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DT Retail Scoutabout: Cities & Trikes & Marinas Edition

I'll probably add a couple of items to this retail scoutabout, since two of them aren't really retail: Befuddled Citydweller Baby Gift Alert Marilyn Singer and Carll Cneut's countdown to naptime book, City Lullaby, got a pretty glowing writeup in...
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November 12, 2007

Sweet Canadian Minivans You Can Get, Just Not Fit Into

Fagus is Italian for beech, let's get that out of the way right now. These are two of a whole series by Fagus of sweet-looking toy vehicles made of solid beech and rubber. They're at Natural Pod, a British...
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November 9, 2007

Iroiro Hiromatsu Pine Blocks

Iroiro is Japanese for various, and you write it using the kanji for color, twice. And though it's not grammatically correct, it makes a nice sound up against the Hiro in Hiromatsu Furniture Company of Ogawa, in Fukuoka. Who,...
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November 8, 2007

Sweet & Minty: Creative Playthings Giant Magnifier

Now that's nice, a Giant Magnifier from Creative Playthings, new in the box. I got one of these for the kid before she was really able to play with it; after about 2.5-3yo, she fell in love with sticking...
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November 7, 2007

Found! That Sick $790 Mod, Spinning Dollhouse

Q: Is the obsession with mini-sized modernism that leads someone to pay $790 for a sweet-yet-anonymous, architect-made, Plexi-on-a-lazy-susan, modernist dollhouse on eBay the same kind that leads someone to create a blog devoted exclusively to modernist dollhouses? A: Yep....
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Permis De Construire, Nominally Sofa-Shaped Blocks By Matali Crasset

Now that Matali Crasset has been identified as the ingenius behind the foam-block-sofa made from cheapass-immigrant-plaid-shopping bags concept, her new Permis de Construire [Construction Permit] sofa for Domeau & Peres fits even more comfortably within her oeuvre. [Though I'm...
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Three's A Torendo: Sweet Wooden House Blocks In Japan

Shinichiro Nakahara is the Minoru Mori of gorgeous-grain, house-shaped wood blocks. With their single painted roof side, Gochi's toy-sized House Blocks are the genre's [relatively] flashy Roppongi Hills. Meanwhile, Landscape Products' artisanal paper and printing company, Papier Labo has gotten...
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November 6, 2007

I'm Telling You, Humans, The Robots Are Coming For Our Kids

And when they enslave us, it'll be through cutesy friendliness, not Decepticon-like terror. That'll come later."We expected that after a few hours, the magic was going to fade," Movellan says. "That's what has been found with earlier robots." But, in...
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Odkins: For Example, A Plush Flava-Flav Giraffe

I saw the real Flavor Flav bustin' around somewhere recently, wearing that damn clock, and just waiting to collect his check. Man deserves to make a living, don't get me wrong, but it just seemed a little sad that...
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November 5, 2007

This Is Your Brain On Aqua Dots. Any Questions?

So far, the most chilling words to come out of the kid's mouth are "No, I learned it on [insert TV show name here]," as in:"And Daddy, dogs are hunters by nature." "REALLY. Did you talk about that at school?"...
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"Like Zoids Or Transformers Or Maybe Even Bigger"

That Mr. T mention got me itching to see Nizlopi's JCB Song video again, which still makes me cry, 2.5 years later. It also reminds me that Michael Bay is not worthy to scrub the road grime off of...
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Borat's Stuffed Thong, Or Knitted Icons: The Most Complete List

Alright, I notice there is no comprehensive list of all 25 celebrity doll patterns in Carol Meldrum's book, Knitted Icons: 25 Celebrity Doll Patterns. So I've compiled what I can from the various write-ups, which only make me wonder...
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More Plush Guts: Plush Guts From I Heart Guts

If one more set of adorable plush organs hits the market, your kid'll be able to open up his own plush CSI or plush haggis factory. The latest come from I Heart Guts, the brainchild of LA artist/designer Wendy...
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November 4, 2007

Danish Rattan Rocking Horse At Jennifer Delonge, Craigs Delist

From Design*Sponge we learn that Jennifer Delonge, the paragon of Westside infant chic, is now offering a carefully edited selection of "fresh" vintage furniture, or as we say in the biz, "a few great pieces." Among them: a very...
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November 3, 2007

DT Headline Roundup: T-Mag, C-Class, L-Word, ABC Edition

Alright, so all the headlines are from the New York Times. I'm like that guy on NY1 who reads the paper for you in the morning, only I pull out the dad-related stories: Inside The Box: I admit, I fell--hard--for...
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It's My City In A Box, Baby!

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } , originally uploaded by asa*. Alright, the punch-out cardboard toy in a box student project...
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Dear Floris Hovers, I Was Totally Kidding About The Lead Paint And Staples

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } L1090519.JPG, originally uploaded by mcmo's. Alright, the painted metal toys at Dutch Design Week just...
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November 2, 2007

Core77 Covers Dutch Design Week: DT Covers Core77

So the big designblogs are rolling out their photocoverage of Dutch Design Week, which ended like a hundred years ago [or a week ago; why does this week feel like it's gone on a hundred years?]. Core77 just posted...
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Suh-Weet Price On Suh-Weet Maple Hollow Blocks By Community Playthings

Alright, I've kept quiet long enough, and Andy and his readers over at Stork Bites Man have had their chance. And though I know I'll regret not buying them myself--I kind of think they'd be kind of insanely awesome...
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November 1, 2007

I've Been Through DWR On A Tori Folding Rocking Horse With No Name

The Tori folding rocking horse is by Plan Toys, which means it's made from sustainably harvested plantation rubberwood, and it's kind of modern. I'm still trying to figure out how it doesn't collapse mid-ride when the kid gives it...
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October 31, 2007

Oguro Saburo Is The Hardest-Working Man In The Japanese Jigsaw Puzzle Business

After finding his hina matsuri puzzle dolls yesterday, I wanted to see more of Oguro Saburo's intricately modern work. Be careful what you wish for, the guy is a puzzle-making machine. If the jigsaws and wood planks ever rise...
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October 30, 2007

Plush Companion Cube [Non-Weighted]

Some noob with awesome sewing skills posted a picture of this sweet, plush Companion Cube [from the X-Box 360 game Portal] to the papercraft/origami section of rambunctious anime fansite 4chan, where Kotaku picked it up. The result: a foul-mouthed...
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ITSOCUTEMAKEITSTOP! Frying Pan Bunny Is Flipping Little Wooden Burgers

Holy smokes, I just hit a spot in the Gangukan blog archives that's so sweet, I'm gonna have to eat the 5 lb bag of Tootsie Roll products we bought for Trick or Treat just to come down. Hasutani...
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Whoa, The Gangukan Japanese Folk Toy Museum Has A Blog.

Check out all the awesomeness that is captured on the Gangukan's blog. They have papercraft and wood toybuilding workshops for kids, a lot of craft exhibits [eh.] and a whole array of contemporary folk toymaker showcases and posts: Momotaro-palooza: in...
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FYI, Japanese Folk Toys Are Called Kyoudo Gangu

taiguruma by Futabashi Hariko, Shizuoka pref. image via That's 郷土玩具, kyoudo gangu if you're surfing at home. [that Google link will survive the posting process, even if the characters get mangled.] After seeing that beautiful suite of woodblock prints...
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October 29, 2007

Playmobil Dad Almost Pushes Stroller

A heads up to all those dads who don't feel validated until you've been commoditized in plastic, you may now give yourself a big hug. For the first time, Playmobil has introduced #4408, Dad with Stroller. Specifically, it looks...
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October 28, 2007

Sweet DIY Slot-Together Cardboard Play Kitchen

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Toy Kitchen 2, originally uploaded by annam42. Very nice. Anna, a craftblogging mom who knows...
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Sweet Vintage Suburban Playthings

There's a reason this eBay auction of a single-room Creative Playthings dollhouse stuffed with original matching Antonio Vitali furniture is already $75: because it's freakin' awesome. Most of it looks to be in excellent condition, even the more played-with...
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October 27, 2007

Unaru No Tomo: Awesome Old Old Japanese Toys

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Japanese toy designs k, originally uploaded by peacay. From the always spectacular BibliOdyssey comes Unaru...
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October 26, 2007

Sweet Community Playthings Convertible Ready To Hit The Strip

From the same eBay seller--who's donating the proceeds back to the church where these old toys came from--comes this sweet, giant Community Playthings car. You could fit the whole Rat Pack in that thing, and still have room in...
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Community Playthings Phone Will Require Much Explanation

My first thought when I saw this vintage Community Playthings maple phone appear on eBay was, "Yow, better watch that phone cord doesn't wrap around the youngster's little neck." But then I realized, it'll take so much to explain...
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October 24, 2007

Must. Fondle. Japanese. Plush Breasts

I am like a deer caught in the headlights--the modestly labeled but generously sized, multi-shaded, and extremely tactile-looking headlights--of Japan's plush toy masters. The Funwari Milk-chan collection of plush breast toys includes three sizes: A cup [20cm diam.], B...
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Richard Hutten Designer Slide At Dutch Design Week

The army of designbloggers is making us wait again, this time for photos and reportage from Dutch Design Week. DDW involves all the design schools as well as Dutch firms, so it should be a source of some interesting,...
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I Wanna The Chalkboard World, Muji, And Everthinnisinnit

Holy crap. Muji better have about ten thousand of these chalkboard globes at the SoHo store when it opens November 16th. Otherwise, I will be leading the Great Muji Riot of '07. And they might want to have a...
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October 22, 2007

RAW Clothing, Awesome Handmade Gifts, By My Modern Life

My Modern Life is an eBay seller in Lincoln Nebraska who first crossed my radar when she posted some vintage toys in insanely great condition by Creative Playthings and Kay Bojesen. As if that wasn't awesome enough, My Modern...
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Where's Gumby, Dammit? Awesome Zinus Travel Pillow Thing

Coming back from Miami, I saw a kid with this crazy green Gumby-looking neck pillow on. It looked like a toy being used as a neck pillow, or some weird hybrid of the two, with that tactile nylon &...
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October 18, 2007

Holy Smokes, The Slot-Together Toy Church Of Dr. Caligari

In that Petaluma post this morning, DT reader Cookie [who, AFAIK, is not the pudgy-baby-hating Cookie] suggested that sweet hardwood castle set might come from a German company called Holzkram. It didn't, but just get a load of Holzkram's...
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Some Day My Sweet Hardwood Prince Will Come From Petaluma

Ashley is a Reggio Emilia atelierista by day, and a felt artist by night. She also has a blog with no links. Obviously, she lives in San Francisco. When she was in Petaluma, peddling her wares, she happened to...
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October 17, 2007

Holy Flatpack! Slot-Together Bumpalow School, Circa 1931

Put that in your Dwell prefab and compost it. As early as the 1930's, Milton-Bradley was producing sweet, slot-together wooden doll houses and other play buildings as part of Bumpalow Town. There was also a store, a church, a...
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October 16, 2007

Playdate At The Mall: Friends With You's Rainbow Valley Playground

When I explained to the kid that I was going to Miami for a couple of days, she drew a blank. Then when I told her it was where the Malfi Playground was, she freaked out. And now I...
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This Just In: A Bear Wearing Underwear

True, a teddy bear who's a big boy and wearing big boy underwear [we call the white ones "classics"] might help the kid along with his potty training. OR it could trigger an all-out underwear revolt when he realizes...
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October 14, 2007

Hello, Awesome Ikea Pull-Toys

You turn your back on that Big Blue Box for a minute, and what do they do? They plop down bins full of interesting painted wood pull toys by Canadian-in-Copenhagen designer Francis Cayouette. Cayouette seems to be one of...
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Book Traps

Recovergirl sets book traps and game traps for her sons, and they apparently always work:you can use book traps to divert your children to different parts of the house. I needed to clean the boy’s room but I knew...
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October 12, 2007

ToDo: TokiDoki Signing Party 10/13 At Yoyamart

If you've got some Moofia toys you need signed, or if you've been waiting to get near TokiDoki Simone Legno before you buy, now's your chance. Yoyamart is hosting a Tokidoki party tomorrow night, Saturday, 10/13, from 7-10pm. That's...
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DT Headline Roundup: Mustang Rally, Bud & Cracker Barrel Edition

"You wake up on Sunday morning -- you don't expect to see a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old hooting down the street in a car." Unfortunately, dad was not the one who was awake. On the bright side, they stopped...
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October 10, 2007

Sliced-Through Predator Plush, This Time As Slovenian Performance Art

Wherever there's video of plush bunnies being extracted from a giant plush predator, I am there. Regine posted about a recent performance/sculpture installation in Ljublana, Slovenia which eerily--and kind of hilariously--echoes Lizette Greco's adorable See-Through Predator video just featured on...
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October 8, 2007

Awww, My First Skis: Designed By Someone In New Jersey.

These vintage Creative Playthings skis are perfect--if you're one of those East Coast ski weirdos who thinks 12 inches of manmade ice and gravel counts as a ski surface. Killington? Sugar Mountain?? Gimme a break Buy the skis because...
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See-Through Predator Plush

See-through Predator from robertogreco on Vimeo. Bwahaha, medical ethics and bodily integrity implications aside, this is awesome. See-Through Predator is a wolf whose teeth were removed so he wouldn't bite his prey, and whose stomach was replaced with a...
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October 7, 2007

The Machine By Samsonite Toys

Alright, finally. The 1972 Samsonite Toys catalogue is up and running on flickr, though a couple of pages are out of order. Check out all the plasticky goodness. With The Machine here, Samsonite ends its toy section with a...
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Gochi House Blocks At Chigo

Chigo, Gochi, get it? It's a Japanese thing, reversing the syllables. It's also the answer to the question left over from Bubble NY last spring, about which of designer/guru Shinichiro Nakahara's constellation of shops, publishing imprints, and design brands...
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October 6, 2007

Design21's Child's Play Competition: Anyone Find Anything Interesting?

This past summer, Design21 Social Design Network sponsored a competition called "Child's Play". The brief: Design an affordable object or a series of objects that a child can play with in which the function is more suggestive than prescriptive and...
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DTbay Roundup: Wood Toys & Indians Edition

Some things that caught my eBay eye. For some reason, they all involve $25, which variously does and does not seem right: Creative Playthings Wooden FireChief Toy Car Red Wood, opening bid $10+14 s/h? Good luck, Goodwill! Auction ends Oct...
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October 5, 2007

Turn Samsonite's Zoo Zoo Into Samsonite's Gitmo Gitmo In Too Easy Steps

Still working to get the scans of this 1972 Samsonite Toys catalogue finished. There were sure a lot of roller skate-type products in that first, expanded collection. There was also the People Places series, their entry into the preschool...
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October 4, 2007

Supercalifreakin' Me Out: Baby Einstein Blocks Recalled For Lead Contamination

I give up. If you need me, I'll be eating Veggie Booty out of a lead bowl, drinking high fructose corn syrup out of a BPA-laced sippy cup, and watching the Hoobs until I've forgotten every multisyllabic word I...
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October 3, 2007

Like-A-Big-Wheel: The Mini-Bike, From Samsonite. Huh Wha?

How awesome is this? A ride-on bike for a one-year-old, with superfat tires so it doesn't tip over? Also, it has a badass set of ape hanger chrome handlebars? Naturally, it's from Samsonite. That's right, they were doing more...
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Momoll Mia! Legno Doll House Furniture

Swiss awesome-maker Momoll has introduced a set of doll house furniture. You could use it with a Momoll slot-together doll house or their plexiglass tower of cool [shown here], or you could just use it to mod up whatever...
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October 2, 2007

Put'em Together And What Have You Got? Block Study Sponsor Is A Disney Licensee

This just in from the Circle of Life Department: From his research linking Baby Einstein videos [by name] to decreased vocabulary development in toddlers to his earlier findings of a link between toddler TV-watching and ADHD, to his book,...
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TV-Hating Researcher's Block Company-Funded Study: Surprise! Blocks Make Your Kid Smarter

"Lead researcher Dr. Dimitri Christakis works with study blocks. Photo courtesy of Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute" In a recently published study commissioned by a Canadian block company [above foreground], Dr. Dimitri Christakis [above, left] and his colleagues at Seattle...
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October 1, 2007

Are Crafters The New Carnies?

Seems like we missed the Crafty Bastards Craft Fair down in DC yesterday. For a second, I thought I should be bummed, but then I realized there are about 10,000 edgy craft fairs popping up all over the country...
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Bwahahahaha Park Slope Like-A-Bike-Snobs-In-Training

From the parent report at Gowanus Lounge:We were on our way back from a great afternoon in Prospect park and my son was happily gliding downhill on his "Like-a-bike" type bike that happens to be made by another brand...
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Yo Jersey, Don't Let Me Catch You Painting This Creative Playthings Kitchen!

Let's face it: 35-year-old play kitchens are going to be played with. It's usually enough to find one at all, much less one in pristine shape. A three-piece Creative Playthings kitchen--sink, oven, and fridge--just hit the eBay. The stove...
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ElmoSapien: What'd I Tell You? Gotta Watch Out For The Robots

The wholly independent human robot modders of RobotsRule.com have loaded a harmless, hilarious Elmo personality into the RoboSapien, then they chopped up an Elmo hand puppet, and created a fleece RoboSapien bodysuit to complete the transformation. It's all good-natured...
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Crayons That Don't Roll Off The Table

I guess the owner of the Mexican restaurant down the street went to a big restaurant expo recently, because the other night, the kid got a little coloring placemat and a pack of triangular crayons called Crayangles. Frankly, we...
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September 30, 2007

Jukka Disk Game & Roller Seat From Finland From Kiosk

I was wondering when the next country would turn up on Kiosk, and it has: Finland. A few times each year, the conceptual SoHo retailer scours a country for exceptionally well-designed and iconic stuff from the rare to the...
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September 29, 2007

Slightly Puffy-Looking Dad Cops To Buying Age-Inappropriate Toys For 3-yo

Andrew Adam Newman reports on the front page of the NY Times Business section today that some parents are so distracted by the threat of lead-contaminated toys, they forget the old-fashioned dangers--like toys with many small pieces that can...
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September 28, 2007

Backpack! Backtrack! This Week In Poisonous Toy News

So many stories about toxic toys, so little time. Even the NY Times wraps up ten different recall and lead incidents into one story these days. To celebrate the World Vinyl Forum, which was in town this week, a consumer...
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September 27, 2007

DT eBay Roundup: CP Farm, Swing & Miami Beach Netto

A few things I'm seeing on eBay--and not bidding on, so I don't mind telling you about them. This is how [some of] your eBay news is made, people! CREATIVE PLAYTHINGS 60'S WOOD LEARNING TOYS FARM An early set of...
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September 26, 2007

Copyright Cluster*@&#: Sweet Vintage Noguchi Playground Scans On Flickr

I don't know about you, but all this copyrighted image outrage just wears me out! Let's take a funbreak--and look at these sweet archival images of Isamu Noguchi's various playground designs which archiblogger Andrew Raimist uploaded to flickr. They were...
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September 25, 2007

The World's Iconic Brands In A Puzzle--Plus Atypyk

Coke McDonald's Nike Apple Playboy... uh, Pine Tree Air Freshener At first I thought the theme of this puzzle was Junk You Haven't Brought In From The Car. But then I realized that the white circle in the upper...
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September 21, 2007

Formwerks Went To The Eames Gallery, And All I Got Was This Lousy--Holy Crap, Dude! Is That A Molded Ply Rocking Horse??

This summer, the Eames Office and Vitra issued a limited-edition, molded plywood elephant based on an early, experimental design that Ray and Charles Eames made for their own kids, but never put into production. [Two were made; the Eames...
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September 20, 2007

There's A Party In My Wallet: Yo Gabba Gabba Toys Will Drop By Thanksgiving

Yo Gabba Gabba! definitely wants to be invited to the Christmas party in your wallet. Kid Robot, the vinyl toy subsidiary of YGG! production company WildBrain just announced to retailers that Yo Gabba Gabba vinyl and plush dolls will...
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H Is For Han Shot First

StarWars.com blogger Neil Baker made a Star Wars Alphabet for fellow Star Wars bloggers to put on Star Wars t-shirts to wear to the Celebration IV Star Wars anniversary commemoration a few months back. Then he turned his alphabet...
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September 19, 2007

Gear Of Son Of Crunchgear

Gearblogger extraordinaire [and onetime DT guestblogger] John Biggs posted some highlights of his son Kasper's inventory at Crunchgear. There's a Quinny Buzz, some select Ikea, a few annoying plastic toys, and my favorites: actual obsolete gadgets and Polish-language toys from...
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September 18, 2007

Creative Playthings Slow Truck Perfect For Your Little Tank Girl

British toy designer Patrick Rylands created the Slow Truck in 1972. It was made for Creative Playthings by the German company Schuco. There was also a Slow Bus, which looks more like a bright red Slow Winnebago. Both toys...
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Robots In The Nursery

Artist/illustrator Patrick Lau started with a painting of a robot for his kid's nursery, which began, as his wife Maya put it, "to slightly have a theme." He added giant gears to the walls, and there's a shelf full...
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September 16, 2007

Beat Blocks: Insta-Rhythms From Wooden Blocks

Beat Blocks are an extraordinarily simple interface for a midi controller and rhythm sequencer. The grid represents four measures x four percussion outputs. The stripes on each block represent the beats within each measure. You compose instantly and in...
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September 14, 2007

A Children's Workshop For [Children] Making Toys

I don't know what we'd do with all the leftover product liability lawyers, but if putting kids to work building their own toys is good for disabled kids in developing countries, why not do it here, too? Solve the...
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September 13, 2007

Are You Sitting Down? Because The Toy Industry Wants The CPSC To Bend Over

So last week's shock at a toy industry request for the federal government to set new safety testing standards has definitely worn off, even before Consumerist described the proposal as "an over-hyped batch of self-serving hogwash." DT reader Mark quickly...
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September 12, 2007

Playmobil Disaster At Times Square Toys R Us

My rather short-notice trip to the Times Square Toys R Us yesterday was not a total cultural disaster [though I'm glad the kid didn't tag along; the suddenly animated animatronic T-Rex would've freaked her action out, let me tell...
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CPSC: Can We Fix It? Not Bloody Likely! "Bob Our Small Parts Guy" Debuts On CSPAN

Un. Be. Lievable. What a train wreck. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee which oversees the Consumer Products Safety Commission is holding a hearing on toy safety, toy recalls, and the utter shambles that is the CPSC and the Toy Industrial Complex's...
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September 11, 2007

Muistipeli Is Finnish For Matching Game

This set of matching cards use rather insanely complex fabric designs from Marimekko. Like Frank Lloyd Wright and his Froebel blocks, these cards are just the kind of thing your kid'll latch onto as the singular inspiration for his...
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September 10, 2007

Wait, Say Again? What To Get Lil Derrick For His 4th Birthday?

1) Scarface: Widescreen 20th Anniversary Edition DVD, which was issued in 2003, the year he was born. 2) Dead hookers & blow 3) A toy gun with a whistle in the barrel. 4) An appointment for Big Derrick to...
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September 6, 2007

You Sitting Down? Toymakers Request Federal Safety & Testing Standards

I'm not sure I even now how to type these words in this order, so I'll have to cut-n-paste from the NY Times story just out:Acknowledging a growing crisis of public confidence caused by a series of recent recalls, the...
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September 4, 2007

Media Frenzy: More Recalls, More Hollow Industry Reassurance

So when I posted two days ago that there were more Mattel recalls coming down the pike, I didn't think I meant today. But there you have it, the AP is reporting Mattel is recalling 675,000 Barbie accessories for lead...
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Mario Power-Up Cube Mobile

When the Mobile Industrial Complex left him high and dry, new dad Will took matters into his own hands. Now he just watches for the day when his Baby not-Mario can jump up and reach these question cubes; that's...
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September 3, 2007

Hung Like A Rocking Horse: Belgian Three-Way Ride-On Toy By Romy Di Donato

At the big-in-Belgium Bois+Habitat expo last spring, Romy di Donato won the Design Wood Etudiants category for her design for a transformable birch ply riding toy. Snap the two arcs into the top, and it's a sweet, abstracted rolling...
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September 1, 2007

CPSC 'Complete Disaster': Bush Administration Sides With Big Everything On Everything

I'm running out of pretend-surprise. The NY Times has a damning article about the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which has been systematically weakened, rendered ineffective, and nearly destroyed by the Bush Administration's appointees, who promised their former employers--manufacturers, corporate...
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August 31, 2007

Decide Your Own Lead Levels By Making Your Kid's Toys Yourself!

If you're sick of waiting for months--or even years--for a recall to find out just how much lead is in your kid's Made In China toys, have I got the blogpost for you! Craftzine has rounded up a giant list...
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August 29, 2007

Probo The Huggable Hospital Robot Is Obviously From Europe

The University of Brussels and the ANTY Project are developing a friendly, plush hospital robot for diagnostic and therapeutic use with children. Despite getting burned on the Teddy Ruxpin thing a few years back, Bill Gates is involved in underwriting...
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August 28, 2007

Blockspotting: My Aunt's Sweet, Vintage Alphabet Blocks

I still can't forget how nice these blocks felt, and how beautiful they are. On a visit to my grandmother's this summer, the kid got to play in the same basement toy closet I did [it used to be...
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August 25, 2007

WHOA, FULL STOP. Spongmonkey Plush Toys???

Have you ever had one of those moments where you suddenly question the way you've lived your life and all the choices and assumptions you've made, and you just stare in baffled rage at your reflection in the mirror, wondering...
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Synergroovy! Creative Playthings Toy News Truck & Camera

Hilariously inevitable. A toy TV news van with a detachable microphone and camera on top, that flips over into a giant toy studio camera, complete with a lens. From Creative Playthings, during the late A Division of CBS years,...
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August 23, 2007

After BPA Blurb, Publicists Reach Out To "Headline Parenting" "Expert"

So while I didn't get on CBS yesterday, I did get a quote in the Washington Post's article about the latest developments in the whole Bisphenol A toxic plastic baby bottle controversy. [I guess that means I'm not TV-hot, only...
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August 21, 2007

Like-A-Vespa

This Like-a-Bike-like walking scooter practically demands to be covered with mod decals and several rearview mirrors. And if anyone knows where to get a kid-sized army jacket, I know where to get an iron-on target t-shirt. [And speaking of...
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August 20, 2007

Bwahaha, Handknit Lemmings Plunging Off Handknit Cliff

[pet-killers: 1, peer-reviewed science: 0!] In the classic 1958 nature documentary White Wilderness, filmmakers for the Walt Disney Company faked a lemming migration and over-the-cliff suicide plunge using pet lemmings they bought from Inuit children. As a result, and...
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DTQ: What's Missing From The Non-Fugly Kids Market?

DT reader, advertiser, and mailing list drawing prize donor Mark from Sparkability took a break from his sweet kids design guru-ing to email his list of the Top Ten Most Needed Kids Products:Cribs under $400 Doll/Play furniture (crib/cradle/highchair) Cookie Jar...
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August 17, 2007

Consumer Reports: Keep All Magnetic Toys Out Of Houses With Young Children

One of the kid's favorite toys is Magna-Tiles. She plays with them every day. They're awesome. They spread like an irresistible marketing virus from playdate to playdate, from cousin to cousin. Not counting the dozen or so folks each...
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